10gb ports on 3 servers, direct connection help

[flamb]

Good evening to all guys !

I'm having a headache on how to connect 3 servers to 10 GB without a switch.

I have 3 HP dl380 GEN9 servers, 2 have esx and 1 has windows server 2016 installed directly (here it should work veeam).

All servers have 10 gb network cards with 2 ports.

I'm trying to connect them to 10 GB but I'm having difficulties, i am attaching a drawing.

could i avoid the different subnets over 10 gb link ? is there a better practice?
https://ibb.co/eE4pf9

[bdufour]

you will need a 10gb switch. you will also need diff vlans configured on your switch - management, vmotion, iscsi, ect

[flamb]

but i want use the 10gbe only for backup and replication ...

[bdufour]

veeam will leverage your virtual infrastructure and its backbone network. so if your host support 10g, get a 10g switch in there and it makes things easier to scale out.
but if this is just a test project or something similar and you want to go the direct connection route - you will need a cross over cable unless your nics support auto-midx and make sure duplex is set correctly on all devices.

[RockemSockem]

could i avoid the different subnets over 10 gb link ? is there a better practice?
https://ibb.co/eE4pf9

The "better practice" is to have a switch.

While technically there is nothing wrong with your implementation, it complicates matters significantly, as you will need more vmk interfaces, more transport rules (or more proxies), and more network segments.

And no, you can't avoid having additional networks in this scenario, because nothing on your 10Gb interfaces would be L2 adjacent. If it's not L2 adjacent (via hardware or software bridging), it's not L3 adjacent.
(That could be considered a gross oversimplification, but this is a backup software forum, not an SDx forum.)

[oliverL]

Good evening to all guys !

I'm having a headache on how to connect 3 servers to 10 GB without a switch.

I have 3 HP dl380 GEN9 servers, 2 have esx and 1 has windows server 2016 installed directly (here it should work veeam).

All servers have 10 gb network cards with 2 ports.

I'm trying to connect them to 10 GB but I'm having difficulties, i am attaching a drawing.

could i avoid the different subnets over 10 gb link ? is there a better practice?
https://ibb.co/eE4pf9

What for difficulties? Is the Ping not reachable? Is it even enabled? Did you configure your vmKernel Interfaces accordingly?

It should be clear, that you can only reach those Interfaces/IPs which are in the same Subnet since you don't have a Router/Switch.

[flamb]

Meanwhile, thank you all.
Surely a 10gb switch is the best solution.

I wanted to understand if there were any other configuration methods possible without 10gb switches.

[bdufour]

Hope it works out according to your preference.