Associate a Physical NIC with a VM

[shzubair]

Hi Folks,

I am have a requirement for which I am not able to find any specific documentation.

Requirement

===========

The Server on which I am installing Vmware ESXi 5.1 has 5 Physical NICs. I would like to create just 5 Windows 7 Virtual Machines and assign one NIC to each Windows 7 VM on the ESX server. Basically what i am looking for is to associate a physical NIC with a Virtual Machine. I understand this can be done. I am going to connect each Physical NIC to a L2 Switch (Cisco) on a switchport. Now the specific requirement here is, when I disable my NIC from my Windows 7 interfaces page the line protocol on the switchport should go down and vice versa, when I shutdown the switchport on the switch, the NIC on Windows 7 VM should say "not connected".

I would like to know if this is possible in Vmware ESXi version 5.1.

I hope the requirement is clear, if not please feel free to respond and i'll put in some more details.

Regards,

Zubair

[Troy_Clavell]

you can use VMDirect Path, but i don't believe you'll be able to connect all 5 devices.

VMware KB: Configuring VMDirectPath I/O pass-through devices on an ESX/ESXi host

[tomtom901]

Edit: Seems you're able to do that with DirectPath I/O (map each vmnic to a different VM). You could give that a try.

[Kahonu84]

Aloha,

Create 5 vSwitches and associate one physical NIC per. Put one VM on each vSwitch.

Bill

[tomtom901]

Then you didn't read what needs to happen when the W7 nic is disabled. That won't work with vSwitches.

[bluephoenix71]

Hi all,

I would like to know if this setup is possible?

1 server configured with vmware workstation or ESXi

Server has 5 windows 7 instance configured

5 NICS (each NIC is connected to 1 windows 7 instance)

5 NICS will be connected to a cisco/arista/juniper switch.

* HOW can you bind the physical NIC to the windows 7 instance?

* WHAT configuration should I be doing in order to physically bind the NIC to the windows 7 instance that it would emulate a physical windows 7 machine?

* End result would be if that I shut the port on the switch, LAN or NIC on the windows 7 will be disconnected.

* As if I have 5 physical workstations connected to the same switch.

Thanks for all your comments.