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Change NIC on virtual vCenter Server

We just purchased some new hardware and the vendor came in to set it up and install VMware ESXi 6.0 on it for us.  They also installed a virtual vCenter server on this cluster as our old vCenter is physical and going to be retired.  Anyway, they setup this new vCenter server with the E1000 NIC instead of the VMXNET3 NIC.  This new hardware has 10GBe physical NICs so I would like to change the virtual NIC on the vCenter server to VMXNET3.  Is this recommended or possible?  I have heard some horror stories in doing this - I think it was something about it didn't like the change of the MAC address.  I tried looking for a KB, procedure, or best practice but didn't find any.  We do have production VMs running on this cluster as well.  I am wondering if I can/should do this and what the proper procedure should be.  Thanks!

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rcporto
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I really recommend you use the VMXNET3 virtual adapter and is possible to change the virtual adapter that virtual machine where your vCenter is running without problem, and one of possible ways to do this is:

1) add a VMXNET3 virtual adapter to your vCenter virtual machine;

2) connect to vSphere ESXi host where vCenter virtual machine is running and connect to the vCenter virtual machine console;

3) stop the vCenter services, remove the IP address from the old (E1000) virtual adapter and assign the IP address to the new VMXNET3 virtual adapter and then restart the vCenter services;

4) check if everything is working and then remove the old E1000 virtual adapter from vCenter virtual machine.

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Richardson Porto
Senior Infrastructure Specialist
LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/richardsonporto
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