ESX 4.0 - How can you tell which physical NIC vswif is bound to?

[Nykad]

Hi all,

Noobie question here but how do you tell which NIC card the sevice console is bound to? We have ESX server with 6 NIC cards on them each and I need to be able to tell what NIC the service console is on. I've googled my brains out but no luck. esxcfg-vswitch -l is not showing what NIC it is on since, I'm guessing, we're running vCenter.

Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks.

[vmroyale]

Hello and welcome to the forums.

The "esxcfg-vswitch -l" command will show you which Uplink (vmnicX) the Service Console is on.  Then you can use the "esxcfg-nics -l" command to match up a physical NIC to VMNIC.

Good Luck!

[Nykad]

Hi,

That's part of the problem. "esxcfg-vswitch -l" is not showing the virtual NIC vswif is connected to. The only mention of vswif in the command output of esxcfg-vswitch -l is what dvPort it is connected to and that it is in use. No mention of the actual NIC.

[chriswahl]

Since you mention seeing dvPorts, I'm taking that to mean you use distributed switches. In that case, the output of esxcfg-vswitch -l might look like this:

DVS Name         Num Ports   Used Ports  Configured Ports  MTU     Uplinks

dvSwitch-MGMT    256         5           256               1500    vmnic4,vmnic0

  DVPort ID           In Use      Client

  265                 1           vmnic4

  266                 1           vmnic0

  100                 1           vswif0

In the example above, vswif0 can go out either vmnic4 or vmnic0. You'd have to check the specifics of your dvSwitch to see how the NIC teaming policy has been configured to figure out exactly where the traffic is flowing.

If you only see one vmnic# in the Uplinks section, then you have found the nic.

[Nykad]

Chris,

Thanks for the reply. That's kind of my problem :/. I have 4 NIC uplinks to the dvSwitch and I was hoping to find some way of telling which uplink the service console is on. Am I out of luck or is there a way to do this? Thanks again.

[Rubeck · Accepted solution]

esxtop networking stats might display a vswif -> vmnic relation....

/Rubeck

[vmeduc]

Did you migrate your service console port to your dVswitch? Many people dont migrate the confusingly named "virtual adapters" in which case it will be alligned to vswitch0 and by default vmnic0... otherwise if your service console is using a port group on a dVswitch, this is easily reviewed in vCenter > Networking > dVswitches..... The problem with dVswitches is, if care is not taken when creating and assigning dvuplinks from the hosts, you can easily have inconsistancies where different vmnics on each host are uplinked to the dVswitch....

[Nykad]

Rubeck,

You hit the nail on the head. Running the command "esxtop" and pressing "n" to pull up the networking statistics will show you what vmnic the service console is bound to. Thanks!

-Joe