Well the hardware is up an running. I started with installing the DC and SCCM - then I installed additional servers (SCOM, Exchange, OCS) using SCCM (more on that later).

The setup runs VMware ESXi 4.0 u1 from my noname Pc. All 5 x NICs are patched to a HP ProCurve gigaswitch and the VM host has local-, iSCSI- and NFS- storage. I’ve enable SSH and I use Jumbo Frames in my network.

Enable SSH on VMware ESXi 4.0:

From the console, press: alt-f1
Type in: unsupported (you will not see a cursor, so watch out for typos)
Type in: <root password>
Type in: vi /etc/inetd.conf (to edit inetd.conf)
Remove the “#” from both ssh entries
Reboot the host

Enable Jumbo Frames on the NICs:

Login using SSH
Esxcfg-vswitch -l (list current MTU = default 1500)
Esxcfg-vswitch -m 8000 vSwitch0 (set MTU to 8000 on vSwitch0)
Esxcfg-vswitch -l (verify that the change has been made)

Repeat the step for every vSwitch

Esxcfg-nics -l (verify that every NIC has 8000 as MTU-Value)

Remember, that your switch has to support Jumbo Frames.

My setup performs best with MTU set to 8000 (My NAS is a Synology 407e running DSM 2.2).