Mapping VM vmnicX to portgroup and removing phantom vmnicX

[Sharantyr3]

Hello there,

I am running on vsphere 6.7 with dvswitches.

I have two issues regarding networking performance on Performance>advanced section.

First, many if not all of my VMs have multiple vmnic (vmnic1, 2, 3, 4...) while they only have one vNIC.

For exemple, this VM has only one vNIC, no snapshots, but has 7 vmnic different objects (vmnic1 is the good one because it has network activity) :

My second issue is with VMs that has multiple vNICs, how can I map vmnicX <-> vNIC number / portgroup name ?

For instance, here is a VM with 3 vNICS :

Here it is how it looks like on performances tab :

Should I ignore "vmnicX" objects and only use "400X" objects ?

Then 4000 = vNIC 1, 4001 = vNIC 2, so on ?

Thanks

[Sharantyr3]

Any ideas ? 🙂

[virtsysadmin]

vmnicX <-> vNIC

vmnicX <- Physical links

vNIC- virtual NIC used for the VM
400x -> virtual nic number

[Sharantyr3]

I don't understand you 🙂

Why do I have this much phantom vmnics in graphs ?

For some VMs, the real vmnic is vmnic0, some vmnic1 (and they have a ghost vmnic0)

[virtsysadmin]

Not a phantom, it's they are not the same, and they are part of the implementation so a VMware admin can identify and filter out based on what they are looking for on a particulate VM.

VM NIC  - network cards assign to the VM
These are number showing different virtual adapters in multi homed VMs.I.e. ethernet0 would be object 4000, ethernet1 - 4001 ..etc.

vmnic
there are up link and you can select each vmnic to isolate performance impact from that VM on each uplink.

if you select the same vmnic under the host it shows you overall performance characteristic related to the host .

what is your end goal ?  might can help with that.

[Sharantyr3]

Hello,

I understand better now what you wrote earlier. I never thought vmnic could be an object "outside" the VM ! You are telling me vmnicX is the network usage of vNIC through the "physical uplink X" available to the VM, right ?

I m not sure how can I end up with 8 vmnic (in performance graphs) when I have only 1 vnic and 2 physical uplink on the host, hence the term "phantom". If you have an idea, for my understanding.

I am retrieving performance data using powercli for VM network usage per vlan, so I will use objects 400X and not vmnic objects.

Can I be sure 100% that object 4000 is vNIC1, object 4001 is vNIC2, so on ?

Also just as a general suggestion, it would be easier to read performance graphs if vNIC objects were displayed like "400X - portgroup-name"

Thank you 🙂