For hosts that are associated with a distributed switch, you can assign physical NICs to uplinks on the switch. You can configure physical NICs on the distributed switch for multiple hosts at a time.

For consistent networking configuration throughout all hosts, you can assign the same physical NIC on every host to the same uplink on the distributed switch. For example, you can assign vmnic1 from hosts ESXi A and ESXi B to Uplink 1.

Procedure

  1. On the vSphere Client Home page, click Networking and navigate to the distributed switch.
  2. Right-click the distributed switch and select Add and Manage Hosts.
  3. On the Select task page, select Manage host networking and click Next.
  4. On the Select hosts page, under Member Hosts, select from the hosts that are associated with the distributed switch.
  5. Click Next.
  6. On the Manage physical adapters page, you can add or remove network adapters to the distributed switch by assigning or unassigning an uplink.
  7. To manage adapters on all hosts that have the same physical network adapter, select Adapters on all hosts.

    The user can see -- while selecting an option in the uplinks drop down menu. This option indicates that not all the hosts with the same network adapter can be assigned to the same uplink.

    For example, if vmnic 0 is assigned to Uplink 1 in ESXI A, and to Uplink 2 in ESXI B then the -- option will be selected in the drop down menu. Selecting this option and moving to the next operation does not change any configuration.

    1. To assign an uplink to the host, select an uplink from the drop-down menu.
    2. To unassign an uplink from the hosts, select None from the drop-down menu
    3. You can view the switches that use this VMkernel adapter in In use by switch.
    4. To see more details about the hosts, expand the network adapter listed under Physical network adapters.
  8. To manage adapters per host, select Adapters per host.
    1. Select the individual host from the list.
    2. To assign an uplink to the host, select an uplink from the drop-down menu.
    3. To unassign an uplink from the host, select None from the drop-down menu.
    Note: While adding hosts to the vSphere Distributed Switch with network offloads compatibility, you can only add a compatible adapter that is supported by a compatible DPU.
    If you select physical NICs that are already assigned to other standard or distributed switches, the NICs are migrated to the current distributed switch.
    For consistent network configuration, you can connect one and the same physical NIC on every host to the same uplink on the distributed switch.
    For example, if you are adding two hosts connect vmnic1 on each host to Uplink1 on the distributed switch.
  9. Click Next.
    Note: If a host does not have an assigned physical network adapter, then a warning appears.
  10. On the Manage VMkernel adapters page, you can add VMkernel adapters to the distributed switch.
  11. On the Migrate VM networking page, select the check box Migrate virtual machine networking to migrate virtual machines to a distributed switch.
  12. Click Next.
  13. On the Ready to Complete page of the Add and Manage Hosts wizard, review the settings for the virtual machine.
  14. Click Finish.