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Wasisnt
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How do you tell what NIC your vSwitch is using?

We are still experimenting with our ESXi 4.1 setup and have 4 NICs assigned to a vSwitch. 3 are active and one is set as standby. Is there a way to tell what NICs are actually getting used or are all 3 active NICs getting used at the same time for NIC teaming? I've attached some screenshots to show our setup.

Another thing we noticed is that the standby NIC for the VMnetwork and Management Network are different and seemed to have been changed on their own. Is that normal? For example the standby NIC for the Management Network is set to vmnic3 and the NIC for the VMnetwork is set to vmnic2

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khughes
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Well they are all being "used" to my knowledge.  The only way I've really seen to see which one is taking traffic is to do an advanced performance view of the host and look at networking. From there it lists each nic and how much data it is pushing through. I know we have 4 teamed NIC's (similar to your setup minus the standby setup) and usually only one NIC is pushing data at a time.

-- Kyle "RParker wrote: I guess I was wrong, everything CAN be virtualized "

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vmroyale
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Hello.

You can use resxtop or the performance charts (Advanced, Network) to see if traffic is going across each of the NICs.

Good Luck!

Brian Atkinson | vExpert | VMTN Moderator | Author of "VCP5-DCV VMware Certified Professional-Data Center Virtualization on vSphere 5.5 Study Guide: VCP-550" | @vmroyale | http://vmroyale.com
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weinstein5
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You can use the performance tab in the vsphere client to see if the physical NICs are being used - how they are being used will depend on how the NIC Teamming is set --

In terms of the physical NIC being used for standby - you can set a nic for standby at the vswitch level or it can be overl ridden by the settings for the port or port group - look at the configuration of your vmkernel port and see if the vmnic3 is set for standby -

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khughes
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Well they are all being "used" to my knowledge.  The only way I've really seen to see which one is taking traffic is to do an advanced performance view of the host and look at networking. From there it lists each nic and how much data it is pushing through. I know we have 4 teamed NIC's (similar to your setup minus the standby setup) and usually only one NIC is pushing data at a time.

-- Kyle "RParker wrote: I guess I was wrong, everything CAN be virtualized "
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Wasisnt
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All the NICs show traffic although vmnic2 seems to have more traffic and the standby (vmnic3) shows traffic too. vmnic2 and vmnic3 are a fiber connection while vmnic0 and vmnic1 are copper.

The esxtop works at the console but when I try resxtop it says not found. Do I need to be in a certain directory first before running it?

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rajvm256
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resxtop from the remote cli (RCLI) or esxtop from the esxi server.

Thanks | http://virtualvm.info/
Wasisnt
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Thanks for all the answers. Its making things more clear.

But does anyone know why the standby NIC for the VMnetwork and for the Management Network would be different? When adding the NICs to the switch we set vmnic3 as the standby but for the Mangement Network it set vmnic2 as the standby (see attachments)

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weinstein5
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You can set a standby nic at the virtual switch level and you set standby nics for individual port groups and vmkernel ports - the settings for the ports and port groups will take precedence over the settings of the virtual switch - so with that in mind could comeone have gone in and modified the settings of  the port group -

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Wasisnt
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It happened right after we set it up and then went back to look at the settings so I now that nobody change it. I was wondering if it gave different standby NICs for each on purpose for some reason. I also noticed on one host that there was no standby adapter listed on one of the ports.

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