ESXi 5 port mirroring (possible)?

[morganyang1982]

Hi All:

Is it possible to configure port mirroring on a virtual switch on ESXi 5? I heard the feature is supported on vSphere.

I would like to mirror traffic between guest OS's as well as between instances of ESXi's

Much Thanks

Morgan Yang

[weinstein5]

It is possible to have port mirroring but is only available witha Distributed Virtual Switch - check out page 66 of http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-501-networ...

[morganyang1982]

Thanks for the reply. I'm looking at my vSphere client and I don't see any options to add a Distributed switch.

The manual directs me to click "Inventory" -> "Datacenter" > "New vSphere Distributed Switch"

[mrksiddiqui · Accepted solution]

Distributed Switch is only available with Enterprise Plus. Which one do you have?

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vsphere_pricing.pdf

[weinstein5]

As the other poster indicated the distrubuted switch only comes with the Enterprise Plus license - 

[dlaemmle]

I don't think this works correctly and the way ti currently works doesn't appear any better than making the port your analyzer is on is in promiscious mode.

See thread

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/397971

I have 2 ESX servers connected with all traffic to and from the VMs going through a vDS.

i have an analyzer on ESX1

I have a server and client on both ESX servers

Port mirror has all 4 source ports mirroring to the Analyzer Destination port

clientESX1  to serverESX1  AnalyzerESX1 sees it.

clientESX1 to serverESX2  AnallyzerESX1 sees it

clientESX2 to serverESX1 AnalyzerESX1 sees it.

External to serverESX1 AnalyzerESX1 sees it.

clientESX2 to serverESX2 AnalyzerESX1 does not see it.

external to Server ESX2 AnalyzerESX1 does not see it.

this really seems like a basic port mirror failure.