Hello:
Looking for some input on a best approach for a two-host setup. I have two Cisco ASA 5505's in an active/passive failover and am looking to add some redundancy to my VMware setup. As such I have purchased two hosts that are for all intensive purposes, identical in terms of specs and local storage. Both hosts have 8 available gigabit network interfaces.
I am wondering if it makes sense to add a physical switch layer between the hosts and the ASA's or if I could get away with not having the physical switch layer. What I envision is something like:
Host A is directly connected to Host B on 4 interfaces.
Host A connects twice to ASA A, and twice to ASA B. Uses 4 interfaces. Same for Host B.
ASA A and ASA B are connected to each other via two cables setup as trunk ports (since their interfaces are basically switch interfaces).
All ASA interfaces are 100Mbps only not 1000Mbps.
Given that, and using standard vSwitches, would this be plausible? The issue I foresee is that the VMs in specific VLANs in order to route would have to travel to the ASA, which would mean they would only use 100Mbps links.
But if say VLAN 4 had a VM on one host and a VM on the other host, would those traverse using the direct links between hosts?
What would be a good way of approaching or tackling such a setup? Looking to achieve some redundancy and was planning on using vSphere replication to replicate hosts from one host to the "backup" host for that vm. That way either host could fail and the replica would in theory be bootable. Not true HA, but pretty close.
Thanks in advance!
