Virtual vCenter and vNetwork Distributed Switch

[glemma]

Hi All,

I have a Virtual Cetner server and am trying to add the hosts to a vNetwork Distributed Switch, however I cannot figure out how to get the vCenter server on vNetwork Distributed Switch.

As soon as I convert a host to vNetwork Distributed Switch which has the vCenter server on it, I lose connectivity to the vCenter Server.

Does anyone know how this can be done?

Thanks.

[vSlapp · Accepted solution]

I called support about running vCenter within a distributed switch and they said point blank, "it is not supported". They said because vCenter governs the distributed switch environment, you can't have vCenter within the distributed switch. I had some reservations about this statement since the distributed switch exists on each individual host (albeit, with less functionality than what you have through vCenter).

We were able to get the entire environment up and running with distributed switching (including vCenter within the distributed switch)... but we had an issue when we needed to make an equipment move and needed to shutdown all hosts (along with all VM's). When the systems came back online, all VM's could see the network fine (meaning all VM's connected to the distributed switch)... except vCenter. I could not get vCenter to see the network until I moved it to a standard vSwitch. Then everything was good to do.

VMware said that vCenter has be to be on standard vSwitch. At the end of the day, this isn't a big deal for us since we have four onboard NIC's for uplink connections on each host... but it does require a slight redesign in the networking configuration.

Hope this helps. If there is a workaround (or if someone has contradictory input to what VMware support has stated), I would love to hear it.

Thanks!

[glemma]

Thank for that information, because vCenter is not supported in a vNetwork Distributed Switch I will not be implementing these switches.