Penalty for increase vswitch ports number

[idtidt]

Hi,

Actually we have 4 ESXi in a cluster, it has 2 physical adapter associate to a vswitch with 128 ports. We need increase to 256 ports all ESXi, but we have a doubt:

- What is the penalty we would have for make this change?

- What is the best practices for this case?

Thanks guys

[larsonm · Accepted solution]

Increasing the port count on the switch will take away from the remaining port count on the host, which is 4096 in vSphere 5.5, or on the switch (60,000 for a vDS).  Depending on the version of ESXi, it may take a reboot.  Based on your 4 host scenario...no penalty that will affect your environment.

You should always have more ports available than you will need, to ensure you don't run out unexpectedly.