Lab 7 Using Standard Switches

Posted on by Marcellus Christofan

View the Standard Switch Configuration

First of all, access your vSphere Web Client and go to Hosts and Clusters tab from the navigation pane and select an ESXi host. On the center pane, choose the Configure tab and select Virtual switches. Click on one of the switch on the list.

Figure 1. Virtual switch information

From here we can get various information about a virtual switch. By default the name of the switch is vSwitch0. It is connected to vmnic0 physical adapters. There is a yellow line in the diagram which shows where the network is connected to. My virtual machines are connected to the vmnic0 physical adapters. Currently there are two network connected in the vSwitch0 which are the Management Network and VM Network.

Create a Standard Switch with a Virtual Machine Port Group

Continuing from the previous menu, we will try to create a new switch by clicking the Add Host Networking icon.

Figure 2. Add host networking

A new window will appear. Select the Virtual Machine Port Group for a Standard Switch then click Next.

Figure 3. Connection type selection

On the next page choose New standard switch and click Next. Press the green plus sign to add a physical adapter to the switch. Choose one of the switch and press OK.

Figure 4. Add physical adapters to active adapters

The network adapter is now assigned under the Active Adapters. Press Next to continue.

Figure 5. Newly added physical adapter

Fill in the network label as you prefer and press Next to proceed.

Figure 6. Network label naming

Next page is the summary of the newly created switch. Press Finish to complete the process

Figure 7. New switch summary

You can now see that the the switch is now created with the newly created network connected to it.

Figure 8. vSwitch1 is created

Attach Virtual Machine to New Virtual Machine Port Group

Go to VMs and Templates menu from the navigator tab. Select a VM and right-click to access Edit Settings.

Figure 9. VM Edit Settings

Change Network adapter 1 to the your newly created switch. Expand the network adapter menu and make sure Connect at Power on and Connected is checked. Press OK to confirm the change.

Figure 10. Network adapter changed to new switch

You can now renew the IP address of the VM by going to its command prompt and execute ipconfig /release then ipconfig /renew. As I don’t have DHCP and active directory installed, I will not be covering this part.

Published by Marcellus Christofan

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