Before starting the Foundation process, the consultant should prepare the network by:
* On Nutanix NX Series, connect the IPMI port and any one of the data ports to the switch: This ensures that the IPMI (for management and remote access) and at least one data port (for cluster communication and data traffic) are connected and operational, facilitating a smooth foundation process.
References:
* Nutanix Bible (https://www.nutanixbible.com), especially sections on initial hardware setup and network preparations.
* Nutanix Hardware Setup Guide from Nutanix University (https://university.nutanix.com), detailing the specific steps for networking configurations during initial setup.

Ref: https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=Web-Console-Guide-Prism-v5_10:sto-pd- guidelines-r.html

For a customer using an ESXi cluster with two 10GbE NICs on each node and a vSphere Distributed Switch, the recommended load balancing configuration, following Nutanix Best Practices for redundancy and efficiency, is "Route based on IP hash." This setting allows for optimal utilization of network bandwidth and redundancy by distributing the traffic based on the IP address pairings, ensuring a balanced load across the physical NICs.References: Nutanix Bible, Nutanix University NCS-Core 6.8 learning materials