Correlate physical NIC with vmware NIC

[Ritmo2k]

How does one do this? Is it possible to blink the light at the console for instance?

Thanks

[contra422]

Using the Dell 6950 it's quite easy. I just count the ports from the onboard nic upwards, onboard nic 1 matches to vmnic 0 and onboard nic 2 matches to vmnic 1 etc. Then the first quad port card from the left will be next, starting with port A at the top which would be vmnic 3 then port b would be vmnic 4. Depending of the hardware of course they should be numbered pretty much in the same sequence.

Or if the system is not live (or you have more than one nic per vswitch) just run esxcfg-vmnic -l and patch/unpatch to correlate the two.

[Ritmo2k]

Hrm, I login as root (actually su -) and I that command is not understood?

[esiebert7625 · Accepted solution]

With ESX2 you could blink the light, not with ESX3 though. The correct command is esxcfg-nics -l Check out this post...

http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=662139

Fyi…if you find this post helpful, please award points using the Helpful/Correct buttons.

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Thanks, Eric

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[Ritmo2k]

Thanks,

I was going to use ifconfig and do what that post suggested...

[contra422]

Sorry about that, over eager with my typing!

[Schorschi]

WATCH OUT, if the enumeration of the PCI bus is NOT in sequential order your VMNIC0 to physical port 0, VMNIC1 to physical port 1, etc. will not be correct. On some hardware, like the 6850 with Intel dual-port NIC card in slot 1 will enumerates BEFORE the embedded ports!

A bigger problem for us, has been getting the network guys and the on-site guys to realize that since we have cross-switch configurations for the VM dedicated NICs, they have to pay attention to what physical cable is in what physical port as well. And since the network hints feature on VC or ESX host GUI is horrible and vague mistakes are made.