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sutcliff
Contributor
Contributor

esxi5.5 Mac Change - Converted a machine From Physical To Virtual

I had a bare metal machine that we had Red Hat V5 installed on. We had an application license that the vendor assigned to the mac address.

For various reasons we decided to make the bare metal machine an esxi5.5 server and run the Red Hat server as a virtual machine on it. The virtual machine has of course a different mac address. I figured out how to change the mac address of the virtual machine to static and assigned it the original MAC address, but now it is in conflict with the esxi server.

Can I change the mac of the esxi server so that it does not conflict with the virtual machine?

Thanks,

Brian Sutcliffe

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vmroyale
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Would the vendor be willing to provide a new license? If not, I would think the best way to do this would be to replace that NIC in the physical host.

Brian Atkinson | vExpert | VMTN Moderator | Author of "VCP5-DCV VMware Certified Professional-Data Center Virtualization on vSphere 5.5 Study Guide: VCP-550" | @vmroyale | http://vmroyale.com
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sutcliff
Contributor
Contributor

They said it could take a week for a new license and I believe there is a fee.

Thanks,

Brian

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vNEX
Expert
Expert

Hi Brian,

unfortunately its not possible to change MAC address of the physical NIC/Adapter because its bound to hardware.

If you are in time pressure and want to minimize costs give your VM the MAC tied to license and:

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1. If its possible remove or replace original NIC /or

2. If it adapter with just one port disable it in BIOS /or

3. You can disable/hide VMNIC from vmkernel to configure it as pass-through.

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You can do it in two ways:

To find PCI device address use:

# vmkchdev -l

A. Edit device parameters in etc/vmware/esx.conf file by changing owner of the PCI device from vmkernel to passthrough:

/device/xxx.xx.x/owner = "passthru"

B. doing the same with vmkchdev

# vmkchdev -p xxxx.xxx.xx.x (to give it back to vmkernel use -v)

# vim-cmd hostsvc/net/refresh

Regards,

P.

_________________________________________________________________________________________ If you found this or any other answer helpful, please consider to award points. (use Correct or Helpful buttons) Regards, P.
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