11.2. Networking in a Pod

Figure 2 illustrates network setup within a single pod. The hosts are connected to a pod-level switch. At a minimum, the hosts should have one physical uplink to each switch. Bonded NICs are supported as well. The pod-level switch is a pair of redundant gigabit switches with 10 G uplinks.

networking-in-a-pod.png: Network setup in a pod

Servers are connected as follows:

Storage devices are connected to only the network that carries management traffic.
Hosts are connected to networks for both management traffic and public traffic.
Hosts are also connected to one or more networks carrying guest traffic.

We recommend the use of multiple physical Ethernet cards to implement each network interface as well as redundant switch fabric in order to maximize throughput and improve reliability.