identify VMNIC MAC addresses from the Physical Switch (cisco) side

[jerry2096]

I have several vmnics connected to 2 network switches for load balance of guest machines.

On ESX server if I run "ifconfig -a" and can see MAC addresses of each vmnic, but these are not the MAC addresses shown at the cisco switch side.

How do I know which vmnic is connected with which physical switch port?

Another question is about CDP (cisco discovery protocol) support, I can see that ESX server has status of "listen", do I need to enable "advertise" for the cisco switch to identify? Any relationship between?

thanks in advance.

[lamw · Accepted solution]

Take a look at this article for more info regarding CDP: http://blog.scottlowe.org/2009/03/24/viewing-cdp-data-on-vmware-esx/

You have to enable this from the CLI using the following:

esxcfg-vswitch -B {listen,advertise,both,down} vSwitch0 

(e.g.)
esxcfg-vswitch -B both vSwitch0

To see what it's set to you can use:

esxcfg-vswitch -B vSwitch0

=========================================================================

William Lam

VMware vExpert 2009

VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at:

[jerry2096]

Thank you, that's what I wanted.

[TomHowarth]

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Tom Howarth VCP / vExpert

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Blog: www.planetvm.net

Contributing author for the upcoming book "VMware Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing ESX and the Virtual Environment”.