LACP on free ESXi 5.5?

[Fred_Weston]

I have a simple home server which has been running the free version of ESXi 5.5 for about a year.  It runs a few VMs, one of which is a file server containing about 10 TB of files.  I've just purchased a new NAS and am in the process of decommissioning the file server VM and moving all of it's files to the NAS.  At present the ESXi server has a single standard vSwitch with a single 1 Gb/s NIC, and this limits the file copy operation to about 100 MB/s.  Both my ESXi server and NAS have two 1 Gb/s NICs so I'm trying to see if it's possible to use LACP to "bond" the two NICs and get 2 Gb/s of bandwidth between the file server VM and the NAS so I can cut the time it'll take to copy the data in half.  It seems that this is possible, but I'd need to use a distributed switch which is only available with a licensed version of ESXi.

My question - is there a way to revert back to the trial version of ESXi for a day or two so I can use that licensed feature?  I presume I could simply reinstall ESXi over top of itself to reset the evaluation but would that mess with any of the existing datastores?  Does VDS work with a standalone host, or does it require a vCenter server?

[vNEX]

Hi,

regarding reverting to the EVAL mode...this is possible only if some eval days remained at the moment of switching to the licensed version. If they weren't exhausted

you can switch back to the eval mode through Config tab -> Software, Licensed Features.

If there are no eval days left the only option is to reinstall the host, regarding existing datastores you will be asked in interactive installer what you want to do with them

(preserve, overwrite...) it depends on their layout and ESXi installation location. It is always recommended to backup VMFS datastores before you will proceed with setup.

Because API limitations of the free ESXi version you are quite limited with backup solutions one of the option is ghettoVCB.sh - Free alternative for backing up VM's for ESX(i) 3.5, 4.x & 5.x

LACP is only supported on vSphere Distributed Switches (VDS) and yes this feature to be deployed and configured requires vCenter server.