Adding a Standard Virtual Switch

You call the

HostNetworkSystem.AddVirtualSwitch

method to add one or more virtual switches. Pass in the name of the virtual switch and a

HostVirtualSwitchSpec

data object as parameters.

Inside

HostVirtualSwitchSpec

you can specify the MTU, number of ports, network policy, and bridge specification. The bridge specifies how the virtual switch connects to the physical adapter. The currently supported bond bridge provides network adapter (NIC) teaming capabilities through the use of a list of physical devices and, optionally, a beacon probe to test connectivity with physical adapters.

After you have created the virtual switch, you can connect it to a pnic for connection to the outside, and to a VMkernel port or a port group.

To add a virtual switch, use the following steps.

Obtain information about the current networking configuration.

You can use a property collector to retrieve the

HostNetworkSystem

managed object and several of its properties, such as

networkInfo

Define a

HostVirtualSwitchSpec

that specifies the attributes of the virtual switch. You can specify the number of ports (56 to 4088 on ESXi systems) and the

HostNetworkPolicy

. See “Defining the Host Network Policies” on page 122.

Call

HostNetworkSystem.AddVirtualSwitch

to add a virtual switch. Specify a unique name and a

HostVirtualSwitchSpec

that defines the switch attributes.

The following fragment from

AddVirtualSwitch.java

illustrates this.

Adding a Virtual Switch

vswitchId = vSwitch42;
...
ManagedObjectReference nwSystem = configMgr.getNetworkSystem();
HostVirtualSwitchSpec spec = new HostVirtualSwitchSpec();
spec.setNumPorts(8);
service.addVirtualSwitch(nwSystem, vswitchId, spec);
System.out.println( " : Successful creating : " + vswitchId);

Setting Up Networking with vSS

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VMware vSphere SDKs and Tools 6.7

Adding a Standard Virtual Switch