Shulou(Shulou.com)06/02 Report--

Network services are the basis for ensuring normal communication between ESXi virtual machines. Usually, different physical devices are needed to connect in the physical network to generate stable and efficient network services, while different virtual devices are needed to provide services in the virtual network.

ESXi networks are divided into:

Physical network card: a network established to enable normal communication between physical servers.

Virtual Network: A network formed by logically connecting virtual machines running on ESXi hosts to communicate with each other. ESXi hosts can have multiple physical NIC, virtual machines can create multiple virtual NIC, and connect to virtual switches to enable communication between virtual machines.

ESXi network components:

1. Physical NIC: vmnic

2. Virtual network card: vnic

3. Virtual switch:

(1) Standard switch: Simple to operate, but repeated operations are required on all ESXi hosts for each configuration modification, which increases management costs and increases the difficulty of monitoring and troubleshooting. It provides three types of ports/port groups (VM port group, VMKernel, NIC Team):

Virtual machine port groups: Used to connect virtual machines on ESXi so they can communicate with each other and external networks (if there is no vmnic access, communication can only occur within a single ESXi host).

VMKernel: Used by ESXi hosts to provide advanced vSphere functionality over network connectivity.

NIC Team: Used to connect multiple vmnic to the same port/port group at the same time, increasing throughput and providing link redundancy in case of failure.

(2) Distributed switch: It can manage multiple ESXi in a unified way, including advanced functions such as management cost, traffic monitoring, and private VLAN, providing a distributed port/port group.

The essential difference between a standard virtual switch and a distributed virtual switch lies in the scope of its application.

Add port group:

Log in to vCenter using web vClient and find the hosts we have added:

Check the Select Existing Standard Switch radio button to create VM port groups on existing standard switches, check the New Standard Switch radio button to create a new standard switch and VM port groups on it, as ESXi has already created a standard switch by default, so select the Select Existing Standard Switch button here and click Next:

Enter the port group name and VLAN ID to which it belongs, keep it as default, click Next, if VLAN ID is 0, the virtual machine will not receive traffic associated with VLAN; if VLAN ID is 1~4094, the virtual machine can only receive traffic with the same ID; if VLAN ID is 4095, the virtual machine will receive traffic from any VLAN.

Create NIC Teams to increase throughput and provide link redundancy:

Select Physical Network Adapter to form NIC Team and click Next:

Create VMKernel to implement the advanced features provided by vSPhere:

Select VMKernel Network Adapter:

Enter VMKernel port name "vMotion" as identification, select "vMotion Traffic" in "Enable Services" option, leave others as default, click Next:

You can also create VMKernel ports for other functions according to the above steps. It should be noted that you also need to create a standard switch on another ESXi host according to the above steps. The standard switch configuration of two ESXi hosts must be identical except for IP addresses, including port/port group naming.

Find the virtual machine we created and right-click, select "Edit Settings" option in the pop-up shortcut menu, and change the network adapter to the newly created virtual machine port group, as shown below:

The virtual machine is able to ping ESXi hosts and VMKernel ports.

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