Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP) enables vSphere administrators to determine which port of a physical Cisco switch connects to a vSphere Standard Switch or vSphere Distributed Switch. When CDP is enabled for a vSphere Distributed Switch, you can view the properties of the Cisco switch such as device ID, software version, and timeout.

Procedure

  1. In the vSphere Web Client, navigate to the distributed switch.
  2. From the Actions menu, select Settings > Edit Settings.
  3. In the Edit Settings dialog box, click Advanced.
  4. In the Discovery Protocol section, select Cisco Discovery Protocol from the Type drop-down menu.
  5. From the Operation drop-down menu, select the operational mode of the ESXi hosts connected to the switch.
    Option Description
    Listen ESXi detects and displays information about the associated Cisco switch port, but information about the vSphere Distributed Switch is not available to the Cisco switch administrator.
    Advertise ESXi makes information about the vSphere Distributed Switch available to the Cisco switch administrator, but does not detect and display information about the Cisco switch.
    Both ESXi detects and displays information about the associated Cisco switch and makes information about the vSphere Distributed Switch available to the Cisco switch administrator.
  6. Click OK.