McDewey

© 2026 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Page 23 of 34 o Network infrastructure is defined as the physical or virtual switching/routing/fabric network elements providing LAN access or storage access. o Make sure all virtual elements running on the server are listed by Broadcom as compatible for the ESXi release being used, and listed as supported by the compute/storage vendors. o For a physical access switch, you may need to check the compatibility of that switch with your compute/storage vendors. VM Placement Rules ● Physical network access links: Each "server" must provide enough for the vnics of all application VMs (details out of scope for this policy). o Redundant physical network access links (for example, "NIC teaming") are permitted where supported by the VMware Compatibility Guide and the network hardware/software providers' instructions. o If you choose to use access options like VLAN trunking or link aggregation, multiple physical links will be required. ● Application vnic network traffic capacity/quality of service required: o vnic traffic: see application design guides for their "min spec" for network traffic and quality of service (for example, required bandwidth and max tolerable delay, jitter, and loss, along with which quality of service traffic marking mechanisms they support). For example: o For example, see Cisco Collaboration 12x guidelines for Network Infrastructure o For example, see Cisco Collaboration 12x quality of service guidelines o vdisk traffic: If the same network will be carrying both application VM vnic network traffic and application VM vdisk storage traffic, make sure to plan for both sets of traffic. Storage Requirements must be met for the applications to be supported. ● See Cisco network and datacenter Preferred Architectures for best practices on network element selection and configuration.