IP storage traffic should be separated from other IP traffic. This separation can be provided by either using physically separate hardware (network adapters and physical switches) or by using separate VLANs for IP storage traffic. The networks associated with IP storage should be directly connected and non-routable.

Multiple network paths to storage should be configured to provide redundancy and load balancing. Single points of failure should be minimized so that the loss of a single network path does not result in the loss of storage connectivity.

Software iSCSI, NFS, and Software FCoE each require a VMkernel interface to be created on a virtual switch. The VMkernel interfaces that are used for iSCSI and FCoE must be bound to a single physical active adapter.

Having more than one active adapter, or a standby adapter, is not supported with Software iSCSI or Software FCoE.

NFS v3 over TCP does not provide support for multipathing. Using link aggregation will only provide failover, and not load balancing. NFS will always use a single physical network path, even if multiple VMkernels are configured. To manually load balance NFS traffic, create separate VMkernel ports that are connected to separate networks and mount separate NFS v3 datastores.

NFS v4.1 supports multipathing for NFS servers, which support session trunking. Multiple VMkernel ports can be configured to provide access to a single NFS volume that's been configured with multiple IP addresses. This provides load balancing and resiliency for NFS v4.1.

The VMkernel port binding for Software iSCSI is configured in the properties of the Software iSCSI adapter. Only VMkernel ports that are compliant will be available for binding, as shown in the following screenshot:

To enable the Software FCoE adapter, an NIC that supports FCoE offloads must be installed on the host. If a supported NIC is not installed, the ability to add the software FCoE adapter will not be available.

Physical network binding for FCoE is done when enabling a Software FCoE adapter. Compliant and supported physical adapters are available when adding the Software FCoE adapter. Separate FCoE adapters should be enabled and connected to each storage network fabric. A single ESXi host can support up to four software FCoE adapters. Each software FCoE adapter requires a dedicated VMkernel port bound to a dedicated physical adapter.