Trying to connect physical phones and switch to esxi 7 on workstation

[drloveless77]

I am running ESXi 7 in workstation 16 and currently working on installing cucm(in esxi). Physical phones are connected to a physical switch in my home lab, physical switch is connected to my desktop using USB NIC but I am not able to reach the phone or the switch from the ESXi server.

Only thing I have done so far is add another virtual NIC on to my ESXi from workstation.

I tried bridging the usb nic to the esxi network but i lose connectivity to it. I feel like I am missing something simple but I am by no means a vmware guy so please help if you can.

[niyijr]

Hi @drloveless77 

Can you reach the switch and the phones from your desktop via the USB NIC?

You need to set the NIC on the nested ESXi Server (running in Workstation) to Bridged.  This mode connects the virtual machine to the network using the host computer's Ethernet adapter (USB NIC).

To do this click "Edit Settings" on the virtual machine and click "Network Adapters"