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How does VMware assign vmnic labels to Cisco UCS blade servers?

I have around 10 UCS B200M4 blades in a VMware cluster. They all use the following setup for networking in VMware:

Local dvSwitch:

Management: vmnic4 & vmnic5

Distributed dvSwitch:

Storage: vmnic1 & vmnic3

Data: vmnic0 & vmnic2

In UCS Manager, the NICs above are configured as follows:

MLOM NIC 1 = ESXi_Data_A

MLOM NIC 2 = MGT_B

MLOM NIC 3 = STO_A

VIC NIC 1 = ESXi_Data_B

VIC NIC 2 = MGT_A

VIC NIC 3 = STO_B

I added a new blade to the chassis, B200M4, created a Service Profile from the same template as the existing servers, yet I got the following configuration:

Local dvSwitch:

Management: vmnic1 & vmnic4

Distributed dvSwitch:

Storage: vmnic2 & vmnic5

Data: vmnic0 & vmnic3

In UCS Manager, the NICs above are configured as follows, which is the same as the other servers:

MLOM NIC 1 = ESXi_Data_A

MLOM NIC 2 = MGT_B

MLOM NIC 3 = STO_A

VIC NIC 1 = ESXi_Data_B

VIC NIC 2 = MGT_A

VIC NIC 3 = STO_B

Ideally I wanted the new server to use the same "vmnic" labels in the respective switches, as in the other hosts, but for some reason, it seems that the NICs were presented to VMware in a different order and thus given different vmnic labels.

I'd like to understand what I did wrong and how I can avoid this in the future?

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jburen
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Expert

Personally I don't have experience with Cisco UCS but there is an article in the VMware Knowledge Base about the assignment of device names.

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