Setting Up Virtual Switches and Associating a Switch with a Network Interface

A virtual switch models a physical Ethernet switch. You can manage virtual switches and port groups by using the
vSphere Client
or ESXCLI commands.
By default, each
ESXi
host has a single virtual switch called
vSwitch0
. Each virtual switch has logical ports. For information about maximum allowed virtual switches and ports, see the
VMware Configuration Maximums
tool. Ports connect to the virtual machines and the
ESXi
physical network adapters.
  • You can connect one virtual machine network adapter to each port by using the
    vSphere Client
    UI.
  • You can connect the uplink adapter to the virtual switches by using
    esxcli network vswitch standard uplink
    . See Linking and Unlinking Uplink Adapters with ESXCLI.
When two or more virtual machines are connected to the same virtual switch, network traffic between them is routed locally. If an uplink adapter is attached to the virtual switch, each virtual machine can access the external network that the adapter is connected to.
This section discusses working in a standard switch environment. See Networking Using vSphere Distributed Switches for information about distributed switch environments.
When working with virtual switches and port groups, perform the following tasks.
  1. Find out which virtual switches are available and, optionally, what the associated MTU and CDP (Cisco Discovery Protocol) settings are. See Retrieving Information About Virtual Switches with ESXCLI.
  2. For a newly added switch, perform these tasks.
    1. Add a port group. See Managing Port Groups with ESXCLI.
    2. Set the port group VLAN ID. See Setting the Port Group VLAN ID with ESXCLI.
    3. Change the MTU or CDP settings. See Setting Switch Attributes with ESXCLI.