To manage the networking of your environment by using the vSphere Distributed Switch, you must associate hosts with the switch. Connect the physical NICs, VMkernel adapters, and virtual machine network adapters of the hosts to the distributed switch.

Prerequisites

  • Verify that enough uplinks are available on the distributed switch to assign to the physical NICs that you want to connect to the switch.
  • Verify that at least one distributed port group is available on the distributed switch.
  • Verify that the distributed port group has active uplinks configured in its teaming and failover policy.

Procedure

  1. In the vSphere Client, select Networking and navigate to the distributed switch.
  2. From the Actions menu, select Add and Manage Hosts.
  3. On the Select task page, select Add hosts, and click Next.
  4. On the Select hosts page, click New hosts, select the hosts in your data center, click OK, and then click Next.
  5. On the Manage physical adapters page, configure physical NICs on the distributed switch.
    1. From the On other switches/unclaimed list, select a physical NIC.
      If you select physical NICs that are already connected to other switches, they are migrated to the current distributed switch.
    2. Click Assign uplink.
    3. Select an uplink.
    4. To assign the uplink to all the hosts in the cluster, select Apply this uplink assignment to the rest of the hosts.
    5. Click OK.
    For example, assign Uplink 1 to vmnic0 and Uplink 2 to vmnic1.
  6. Click Next.
  7. On the Manage VMkernel adapters page, configure VMkernel adapters.
    1. Select a VMkernel adapter and click Assign port group.
    2. Select a distributed port group.
      For example, DPortGroup.
    3. To apply the port group to all hosts in the cluster, select Apply this port group assignment to the rest of the hosts.
    4. Click OK.
  8. Click Next.
  9. (Optional) On the Migrate VM networking page, select the Migrate virtual machine networking check box to configure virtual machine networking.
    1. To connect all network adapters of a virtual machine to a distributed port group, select the virtual machine, or select an individual network adapter to connect only that adapter.
    2. Click Assign port group.
    3. Select a distributed port group from the list and click OK.
    4. Click Next.

What to do next

Deploy and configure NSX Manager. See Deploy and configure NSX Manager.