Create and Manage Standard Switches - Paiet/Tech-Journal-for-Everything GitHub Wiki

You can create abstracted network devices called vSphere Standard Switches. You use standard switches to provide network connectivity to hosts and virtual machines. A standard switch can bridge traffic internally between virtual machines in the same VLAN and link to external networks.

To provide network connectivity to hosts and virtual machines, you connect the physical NICs of the hosts to uplink ports on the standard switch. Virtual machines have network adapters (vNICs) that you connect to port groups on the standard switch.

Every port group can use one or more physical NICs to handle their network traffic. If a port group does not have a physical NIC connected to it, virtual machines on the same port group can only communicate with each other but not with the external network.

Standard Port Groups -

Each port group on a standard switch is identified by a network label, which must be unique to the current host. You can use network labels to make the networking configuration of virtual machines portable across hosts. It would help if you gave the same label to the port groups in a data center that use physical NICs connected to one broadcast domain on the physical network. Conversely, if two port groups are connected to physical NICs on different broadcast domains, the port groups should have distinct labels.

For example, you can create NicholasProduction and NicholasTest environment port groups as virtual machine networks on the hosts that share the same broadcast domain on the physical network.

A VLAN ID, which restricts port group traffic to a logical Ethernet segment within the physical network, is optional. For port, groups to receive the traffic that the same host sees, but from more than one VLAN, the VLAN ID must be set to VGT (VLAN 4095).

Number of Standard Ports -

To ensure efficient use of host resources on ESXi hosts, the number of ports of standard switches are dynamically scaled up and down. A standard switch on such a host can expand to the maximum number of ports supported on the host.

How do I create a vSphere Standard Switch?

Create a vSphere Standard Switch to provide network connectivity for hosts, virtual machines, and to handle VMkernel traffic. Depending on the connection type you want to create, you can create a new vSphere Standard Switch with a VMkernel adapter, connect physical network adapters to the new switch, or create the switch with a virtual machine port group.

  1. In the vSphere Client, navigate to the host.
  2. On the Configure tab, expand Networking and select Virtual switches.
  3. Click Add networking.
  4. Select a connection type for which you want to use the new standard switch and click Next.

VMkernel Network Adapter - Create a new VMkernel adapter to handle host management traffic, vMotion, network storage, fault tolerance, or vSAN traffic.

Physical Network Adapter - Add physical network adapters to an existing or a new standard switch.

Virtual Machine Port Group for a Standard Switch - Create a new port group for virtual machine networking.

  1. Select New standard switch and click Next.
  2. Add physical network adapters to the new standard switch.

a. Under Assigned adapters, click Add adapters.

b. Select one or more physical network adapters from the list and click OK.

For higher throughput and to provide redundancy, configure at least two physical network adapters in the Active list.

c. (Optional) Use the Move up and Move down arrows in the Assigned adapters list to change the adapter's position.

d. Click Next.

  1. If you create the new standard switch with a VMkernel adapter or virtual machine port group, enter connection settings for the adapter or the port group.

VMkernel adapter:

a. Enter a label that indicates the traffic type for the VMkernel adapter, for example, vMotion.

b. Set a VLAN ID to identify the VLAN that the network traffic of the VMkernel adapter will use.

c. Select IPv4, Ipv6, or both.

d. Select an option from the drop-down menu to set the MTU size. If you select Custom, enter a value for the MTU size. You can enable jumbo frames by setting an MTU value greater than 1500. You cannot set an MTU size greater than 9000 bytes.

e. Select a TCP/IP stack. After setting a TCP/IP stack for the VMkernel adapter, you cannot change it later. If you select the vMotion or the Provisioning TCP/IP stack, you will be able to use only this stack to handle vMotion or Provisioning traffic on the host.

f. If you use the default TCP/IP stack, select from the available services.

g. Configure IPv4 and IPv6 settings.

Virtual machine port group:

a. Enter a network Label or the port group, or accept the generated label.

b. Set the VLAN ID to configure VLAN handling in the port group.

  1. On the Ready to Complete page, click Finish.