What is the default speed/duplex setting for ESX(i) 4.x?

[hennish]

Hi. I've had some questions from customers regarding the default speed/duplex setting for vmnics, and I just can't seem to find a definitive answer to the question: What is the default speed/duplex setting for ESX(i) 4.x?

It seems the recommendation is to set 1 Gb NICs to Auto as long as their corresponding switch ports are set to Auto, but in that case, why does ESX(i) seem to default to 1000/Full for these?

[rickardnobel]

palong wrote:

you mean that this bug is resolved when the HOST is running ESXi 5.0?

Yes, when the host is running ESXi 5.0 the adapters are shown as AUTO.

but I must say for a bug that was discovered in the base 4.0 release to not have been fixed though all interim releases up to current 4.1.0 Update 2 seems a bit strange to me.

I totally agree with you, it is very strange indeed. Since the setting makes it impossible to tell if it is (invisible) AUTO or if someone has actually hard configured the adapter to FULL, which makes it very important to have the switch port to FULL too..

VMware even has a KB article about duplex mismatch and recommends AUTO, but makes it impossible to tell if this is used.

Do you think there is any harm (except for the momentary loss of link redundancy) in setting each of my pnics to Autonegotiate just so that the GUI actually reflects the proper setting of the host pnic?

I am not aware of any issues with setting them to AUTO by hand. This makes it more clear in the display and more easy to troubleshoot.

[Perchik]

After reading this thread, I'm wondering if there is a way to correct this in a kickstart script for new ESXi 4.1 installations? If so, could you please provide and example?

Thank you.