Linking and Unlinking
Uplink Adapters with ESXCLI
You can use ESXCLI
to link and unlink uplink adapters.
When you create a virtual switch
by using
esxcli network
vswitch standard add
, all traffic on that virtual switch is initially
confined to that virtual switch. All virtual machines connected to the virtual
switch can talk to each other, but the virtual machines cannot connect to the
network or to virtual machines on other hosts. A virtual machine also cannot
connect to virtual machines connected to a different virtual switch on the same
host.
Having a virtual switch that is
not connected to the network might make sense if you want a group of virtual
machines to be able to communicate with each other, but not with other hosts or
with virtual machines on other hosts. In most cases, you set up the virtual
switch to transfer data to external networks by attaching one or more uplink
adapters to the virtual switch.
You can use the following
commands to list, add, and remove uplink adapters. When you link by using
ESXCLI, the physical NIC is added as a standby adapter by default. You can then
modify the teaming policy to make the physical NIC active by running the
command
esxcli network
vswitch standard policy failover set
.
- List uplink adapters.
The uplink adapters are returned in theesxcli <conn_options> network vswitch standard listUplinkitem. - Add a new uplink adapter to a virtual switch.esxcli <conn_options> network vswitch standard uplink add --uplink-name=vmnic15 --vswitch-name=vSwitch0
- Remove an uplink adapter from a virtual switch.esxcli <conn_options> network vswitch standard uplink remove --uplink-name=vmnic15 --vswitch-name=vSwitch0