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ppapared
Contributor
Contributor

How to find which vmnic a VM is using on ESXi?

Hello all,

Hopefully this is an easy one for someone. I'm running vSphere4 and using ESXi4. I would like to know if it is possible, from within the vClient, if you can tell which vmnic a VM is using when connected to the Port Group? I have two physical adapters teamed in my vSwitch that my VMs are on. Each VM is only setup for a single nic in its configuration (if that matters). I would like to know if it was possible, from within the vClient, to tell which adapter is being used.

I had one of my fiber connectors go out on one physical adapters that was in the switch that connected to the network so some of my VMs where connected to the network and some of them were not. I figured out if was the fiber connect and replaced it. Everything was fine after that but it got me to thinking about this question.

I don't use vMA to much ( which I plan to start learning more ) and since ESXi only has the troubleshooting console, I didn't know where else to look.

Thanks for the help.

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3 Replies
Josh26
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Hi,

A portgroup is connected to a vSwitch, and the uplinks from there can be thought of as a physical switch's uplinks.

If you plug a server into a physical switch, then team the uplinks from that switch to another switch, you can see it doesn't make sense to ask which of the ports in that uplink is being used by that server.

If it's important to you, the only option is to set the team to an "active/standby" configuration, such that, as long as the active has link, you will know it is in use.

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rickardnobel
Champion
Champion

One possible way, however not from the vSphere Client, is to logon your physical switch and check the MAC address tables and see on which port your VMs MAC is visible..

My VMware blog: www.rickardnobel.se
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lamw
Community Manager
Community Manager

esxtop using "n" option for Network can give you the exact mapping and there is a local "esxtop" within the Tech Support shell, you also have resxtop on vMA, else the other suggestions are other methods.

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