Determine/configure vmnic to physical adapter mapping (ESX 3.x)

[arley_beyond]

How do I determine which vmnic maps to which phsyical adapter?

How does ESX decide to map a given vmnic to a given physical adapter?

How can I change the mapping ESX sets by default? (the defaults are definitely not on my hardware)

[cmanucy · Accepted solution]

PCI bus enumeration (which is what orders your NICs) is not a simple thing to explain. Many factors go into it, and even the same mfg's box with different BIOS revisions can lead to different numbering on the NIC's.

Running the following will tell you what's hooked to what, and you can then re-order them depending on how you physically have them hooked together:

1. esxcfg-vswitch -l

Often times you'll need to re-connect your Service Console nic due to the enumeration.

And if the back of your server says "NIC 1" and "NIC 2", don't pay this any mind... it has nothing to do with how the devices will/are discovered.

[mike_laspina]

Hello,

You can use exccfg-info -n to find where they are mapped.

I beilieve it emun's the PCI bus during the initial install.

Changing it from where it is now .... delete and recreate them with the configurattion you want using the GUI.

[depping]

I usually just connect the first nic and do esxcfg-nics -l and have a look which one is up. than do the next. write everything down. but be aware of the fact that when you replace nic card or add one that all names can change and ruin your vswitch setup.

if the mappings are really weird i just edit the /etc/vmware/esx.conf.

Duncan

My virtualisation blog: