best practices when implementing terminal servers

Young Grasshopper

does anyone know if a best practices guide for implementing terminal servers on esxi? our current physical setup is for a typical 16 physical system config is

8 base system servers(exchange, backup, sql, etc...)
8 terminal servers(all run an app that point to sql)

1 switch


we create 2 vlans on our switch and have NIC2 on the terminal servers plug into vlan 2 to handle load balancing. NIC1 goes into the main vlan which is vlan 1.


i have created 4 terminal servers on esxi and created 2 virtual nics. nic1 has an ip adress for the entire network and nic2 has the load balancing address. EVERYTHING rides on NIC1 of the physical server and things seem to work fine, but it just doesnt sound right. im afraid by doing it this way, once the cluster starts getting larger i will start seeing problems. i know esxi has a 'vswitch' but i have not implemented it yet or even know if it works.


i wanted to know if there is a best practices guide for setting this kind of stuff up?

thanks

astorrs

I would really suggest you sign up for some VMware training, the Install & Configure course would be a good investment - and if you need to you can remind your manager that the more understanding you have during design/implementation/maintenance phases, the less problems you are going to have down the road - where downtime could more than exceed the cost of the training.

Do you think that is something they would go for? If not, I would suggest you at least read through the networking chapter of the ESX Server 3i Configuration Guide to get a handle on how networking in ESX works. Once you have that we can talk about best practices, but without a thorough understanding of how things work it's going to be a bit confusing (sorry, just being honest).