Learn to manage the networking of your vSphere environment by using a vSphere Distributed Switch, you must associate hosts with the switch. You 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 there is at least one distributed port group on the distributed switch.
  • Verify that the distributed port group have active uplinks configured in its teaming and failover policy.

If you migrate or create VMkernel adapters for iSCSI, verify that the teaming and failover policy of the target distributed port group meets the requirements for iSCSI:

  • Verify that only one uplink is active, the standby list is empty, and the rest of the uplinks are unused.
  • Verify that only one physical NIC per host is assigned to the active uplink.

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 Add hosts, and click Next.
  4. On the Select hosts page,
    1. Select the host(s) from the list of available hosts under All hosts.
    2. To view the selected hosts, click Selected.
      The selected hosts are displayed.
    3. To filter the hosts based on their compatibility, click Compatibility.
      Note: While adding hosts to the vSphere Distributed Switch with Network Offloads compatibility, you can only add compatible adapters that are backed by compatible DPU.
    4. To select all the available hosts, click Select All.
  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.
    1. Click Select All to select all hosts.
    2. To assign an uplink to the host, select an uplink from the drop-down menu.
    3. To unassign an uplink from the hosts, select None from the drop-down menu.
    4. To see more details about the hosts, expand the network adapter listed under Physical network adapters.
    5. You can view the switches that use this VMkernel adapter in In use by switch.
    For instance, if you assign uplink1 to vmnic1, it is assigned to all the hosts that have vmnic1 as its physical network adapter.
  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.
    If you select physical NICs that are 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 instance, 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 manage VMkernel adapters to the distributed switch.
  11. To manage VMkernel adapters on all hosts that have the same VMkernel adapter, select Adapters on all hosts.
    1. To select all the hosts, click Select All.
    2. Click Assign Port Group.
      You can see all the available port groups.
    3. To assign a port group, click Assign.
    4. To unassign a port group, click Unassign.
    5. You can view the switches that use this VMkernel adapter in In use by switch.
    6. To see more details about the hosts, expand the VMkernel adapter listed under Name.
    For instance, if you assign DPortGroup1 to vmk0, the port group is assigned to all the hosts that has vmk0 as its VMkernel network adapter.
  12. To manage VMkernel adapter per host, select Adapters per host.
    1. Select the individual host from the list.
    2. Click Assign Port Group.
      You can see all the available port groups.
    3. To assign a port group, click Assign.
    4. To unassign a port group, click Unassign.
  13. Click Next.
  14. On the Migrate VM networking page, select the check box Migrate virtual machine networking to migrate virtual machines to a distributed switch.
  15. To configure per network adapter, click Assign port group.
    1. To assign a port group, click Assign.
      For instance, the port group is assigned to all the virtual machines that have the same network adapter.
    2. To unassign port groups, click Unassign.
  16. To configure per virtual machine, click Assign port group.
    1. To assign a port group, click Assign.
    2. To unassign a port group, click Unassign.
  17. Click Next.
  18. On the Ready to Complete page of the Add and Manage Hosts wizard, review the settings for the virtual machine.
  19. Click Finish.
    You have now successfully added a host to the vSphere distributed switch.

What to do next

Having hosts associated with the distributed switch, you can manage physical network adapters, VMkernel adapters, and virtual machine network adapters.