ESX 3.x Setup and NICs

[jpoling]

At the risk of revealing how little I actually know, I will ask this question:

During ESX setup, how do I tell which NIC in the list is the one that I have the cable connected to?

Example:

ESX Host with 8 NICs

One cable connected to a NIC for service console. All other NICs not connected to the network

Thus far, I simply guessed. . .I am curious if there is a more systematic way to do this

Thanks,

Jeff

[weinstein5]

I do not believe there is anything in installer that will tell you this - if you know the PCI address of the NIC that you have plugged into then you can select the approriate NIC as the NIC to be used

[Leafy911 · Accepted solution]

Look in the BIOS at the PCI devices, from this you will get the PCI numbers and slot locations. ESX usually numbers the nics in PCI order with the first one being allocated to the service console.

Once you've installed ESX and logged on at the console (ilo/drac/local) type in the following command. From this command you can also see which nic is connected to the network and which ones that are not.

# esxcfg-nics -l

Name PCI Driver Link Speed Duplex MTU Description

vmnic0 05:00.00 bnx2 Up 1000Mbps Full 1500 Broadcom Corporation Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM5708 1000Base-T

vmnic1 07:00.00 bnx2 Up 1000Mbps Full 1500 Broadcom Corporation Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM5708 1000Base-T

vmnic2 09:00.00 bnx2 Up 1000Mbps Full 1500 Broadcom Corporation Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM5708 1000Base-T

vmnic3 0b:00.00 bnx2 Up 1000Mbps Full 1500 Broadcom Corporation Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM5708 1000Base-T

Regards

Leafy911

(Dont forget you recieve points when you award points)