You can change the virtual machine network configuration, including its power on behavior and resource allocation.

Starting with vSphere 8.0, you can enable the Uniform Passthrough (UPT) compatibility on a VMXNET3 adapter.

For details about configuring the networking for virtual machine network adapters, see the vSphere Networking documentation.

Prerequisites

  • Required privilege: Network.Assign network on a network if you are changing the network the virtual machine connects to.
  • To activate the UPT support, make sure that the virtual machine is of hardware version 20 or later.

Procedure

  1. Right-click a virtual machine in the inventory and select Edit Settings.
  2. On the Virtual Hardware tab, expand Network adapter, and select the port group to connect to from the drop-down menu.

    The menu lists all standard and distributed port groups that are available for virtual machine use on the host.

    If you want to provision bandwidth to the network adapter from a reserved quota by using vSphere Network I/O Control version 3, select a port group that is associated with the network resource pool that provides the quota.

  3. (Optional) Change the Status settings.
    Option Description
    Connected To connect or disconnect the virtual network adapter, select or deselect this option while the virtual machine is running. This check box is not available when the virtual machine is powered off.
    Connect at power on To connect to the network when the virtual machine powers on, select this option for the virtual network adapter. If you do not select this option, you must manually connect the adapter in order for the virtual machine to access the network.
  4. Select the network adapter type to use from the Adapter Type drop-down menu.
  5. (Optional) Select how to assign the MAC address from the drop-down menu.
    • Select Automatic to assign a MAC address automatically.
    • Select Manual to enter manually the MAC address that you want.
  6. To allow changes in the maximum transmissions unit (MTU) of packets from the guest operating system, select an option form the Allow Guest MTU Change drop-down menu.
  7. To enable the UPT, select the Use UPT Support check box.
    Note: When you activate the UPT support, the full memory size of the virtual machine is automatically reserved.
  8. If the network adapter is connected to a distributed port group of a distributed switch that has vSphere Network I/O Control version 3 enabled, allocate bandwidth to the adapter.
    Note: You cannot allocate bandwidth to SR-IOV passthrough network adapters.
    1. From the Shares drop-down menu, set the relative priority of the traffic from this virtual machine as shares from the capacity of the connected physical adapter.
    2. In the Reservation text box, reserve a minimum bandwidth that must be available to the VM network adapter when the virtual machine is powered on.
    3. In the Limit text box, set a limit on the bandwidth that the VM network adapter can consume.
  9. Click OK.