Hi folks !
After a recent fresh installation, I had to configure the host networking and confirm that the physical switchs of our ESXi hosts were connected to were properly configured. I could have done that by many ways (ESXi UI and Sphere client) but I though it could be nice to use some CLI commands.
As a reminder, if you have a vCenter I suggest that you do this kind of configuration via powercli or thanks to command lines in the vMA appliance (take a look here if you are not aware of this pretty cool appliance. Will try to write a post on this topic soon). This, to update the vCenter database on a real time basis. Configuration tasks should be done on the ESX only if it runs in standalone mode (without a vCenter instance).
Stop talking and let’s get started 🙂
What we’ll have to do to configure our ESX host ?
- List all NICS and check their status
- Create a vSwitch for your test (optional)
- Add an uplink to this vSwitch
- Create the required number of Portgroup for this vSwitch
- Assign a VLAN ID for each Portgroup
Before going further, if you don’t know the esxcfg-vswitch tool just keep in mind that it only returns output on failed commands
esxcfg-nics –l
Create a vSwitch for your test
esxcfg-vswitch –add VLAN-TESTING
Output of this command is null. Just check the result by running esxcfg-vswitch -l
esxcfg-vswitch –link=vmnic2 VLAN-TESTING
If you receive an error like the one below, you must understand that the physical nic is already assigned to a vSwitch and you have to get it back
VirtualSwitch: Unable to Add Uplink vmnic2. Sysinfo error on operation returned status : Busy. Please see the VMkernel log for detailed error informationFailed to add uplink vmnic2 to vswitch VLAN-TESTING, Error: Sysinfo error on operation returned status : Busy. Please see the VMkernel log for detailed error information
List all the switch to retrieve to one you will have to remove the uplink from with esxcfg-vswitch –list
To unassign the nic from the vSwitch0 for example, just type esxcfg-vswitch –unlink=vmnic2 vSwitch0
Once again, output of this command is null. Just check the result by running esxcfg-vswitch -l
Create a PortGroup on the new vSwitch
This, for each VLAN you have to add to your ESX networking layer.
Before running a loop to perform a bulk command I prefer to test it. I do suggest to do the same 😉
My first test consists in checking that my command does exactly what I want : esxcfg-vswitch –add-pg=VLAN-51 VLAN-TESTING
My second test is about confirming the loop I will use : for i in `seq 52 73`;do echo “esxcfg-vswitch –add-pg=VLAN-$i VLAN-TESTING”;done
Everything looks good, i can send my bulk command: for i in `seq 52 73`;do esxcfg-vswitch –add-pg=VLAN-$i VLAN-TESTING;done
As usual, no output. Check the result by listing your vSwitchs…
Specify a VLAN for each Portgroup
Of course, before executing the command, run some tests as we did previously.
for i in `seq 52 73`;do esxcfg-vswitch –vlan=$i –pg=VLAN-$i VLAN-TESTING;done
The command to create all the VLANs from the 52 to 73 (if you ran the test command, you should have created the #51 😉 )
Once added, you can check the configuration of your new vSwitch using the now famous esxcfg-vswitch –list
In the GUI, you should see something like that :
Done !
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Thanks for reading 🙂