ESXi Traffic Types

ESXi hosts use different network traffic types to support vSAN.

Following are the different traffic types that you need to set up for vSAN.

Table 1. Network Traffic Types

Traffic Types	Description
Management network	The management network is the primary network interface that uses a VMkernel TCP/IP stack to facilitate the host connectivity and management. It can also handle the system traffic such as vMotion, iSCSI, Network File System (NFS), Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), and fault tolerance.
Virtual Machine network	With virtual networking, you can network virtual machines and build complex networks within a single ESXi host or across multiple ESXi hosts.
vMotion network	Traffic type that facilitates migration of VM from one host to another. Migration with vMotion requires correctly configured network interfaces on source and target hosts. Ensure that the vMotion network is distinct from the vSAN network.
vSAN network	A vSAN cluster requires the VMkernel network for the exchange of data. Each ESXi host in the vSAN cluster must have a VMkernel network adapter for the vSAN traffic. For more information, refer to "Manually Enabling vSAN" in vSAN Planning and Deployment.