This section reviews the network interfaces on Edge and how you can configure them.

By default, all Edge appliances are equipped with the following physical interfaces:

Traditionally in an Edge appliance, the LAN and WAN interface pairs are used by the RiOS node as an in- path interface for WAN optimization. The primary and auxiliary interfaces are generally used for management and other services.

In an Edge HA deployment, the eth0_0 and eth0_1 interfaces are used for the heartbeat interconnect between the two Edge HA peers. If there is only a single Edge deployed in the branch, then you can use eth0_0 and eth0_1 as data interfaces for traffic to and from servers in the branch that are external to the Edge.

While there are many additional combinations of port usage, you can generally expect that traffic to and from external ESXi servers in the branch use the primary interface. Likewise, the Rdisk traffic to and from the Core uses the primary interface by default and is routed through the Edge in-path interface. The Rdisk traffic gains some benefit from WAN optimization. Management traffic for the Edge typically uses the auxiliary interface.

For the hypervisor node, you can use the gbe0_0 to gbe0_3 interfaces for general purpose LAN connectivity within the branch location. These interfaces enable clients to access services running in virtual machines installed on the hypervisor node. These interfaces are also used by the hypervisor node to connect to the file server exports in the RiOS node.

We recommend that you make full use of all the connectivity options available in the appliance for production deployments of Edge. Careful planning can ensure that important traffic, such as traffic to external servers, Rdisk to and from the Core, and blockstore synchronization for high availability, are kept apart from each other. This separation helps with ease of deployment, creates a more defined management framework, and simplifies any potential troubleshooting activity.

Depending on the model, Edge can be shipped or configured in the field with one or more additional multiple-port network interface cards (NICs). There is a selection of both copper and optical 1-GbE and 10-GbE NICs that fall into one of two categories. The two categories are bypass cards suitable for use as in-path interfaces for WAN optimization or data cards suitable for LAN connectivity.

In the case of LAN connectivity, the data cards might be for any of the following examples:

You cannot change the mode of the NIC from data to in-path or vice versa.