How to Create a vSphere Distributed switch and Port Group ?

After creating the vSphere Distributed switch , you need to create the port groups for networking and segregate the VLAN.

1. Right click on the vSphere Distributed switch and click on new port group.

 

2.Enter the port group name (Meaning full name),Select number of port and enter the VLAN if any.Multiple VLAN can be given here by selecting the VLAN trunking.

 

3.Click finish to create a new port group with desired vlan.

We have successfully created vSphere distributed switch port group  and now we are here .

In this section,we will see how to add the ESXi hosts to vSphere distributed switch.

1.Right click on the vSphere Distributed switch and click on “Add host”.

 

2.Here you can see both the ESXi hosts and networking information.Select the physical NIC which is not used by vSphere standard switch .This will eliminate the network interruption on other networks.

 

3.In this window,you have option to migrate the VMware ESXi host networking and ISCSI adapter. If you migrate the VMware  ESXi networking to vSphere distributed switch, there is no way to bring the network back to vSphere standard switch on fly. If you migrate the iSCSI adapter to VDS, there is possibility of storage disconnection. vCenter will show the impact if you try to migrate that.Here i am not performing any migration and its out of scope.

4.This wizard provides an option to migrate the virtual machine  from vSphere standard switch to VDS (vSphere Distributed switch).

 

5.Click finish to add two ESXi hosts to vSphere distributed switch.

We have successfully added  ESXi hosts to VDS(vSphere Distributed Switch) and those ESXi’s “vmnic3” will be added to the uplinks port of VDS.

The below high level diagram will help you understand better.

For your information, ESXi hosts and VM’s continue to operate with vSphere distributed switch without vCenter server too since the VDS configuration copies are placed on the hypervisor.

Here is an article to demonstrate VM migration from vSphere standard switch to vSphere Distributed switch.

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