6.0

Table Of Contents
4 In the Security group, select whether to reject or accept the Security policy exceptions.
Option Description
Promiscuous Mode
n
Reject — Placing a guest adapter in promiscuous mode has no effect
on which frames are received by the adapter.
n
Accept — Placing a guest adapter in promiscuous mode causes it to
detect all frames passed on the vSphere standard switch that are
allowed under the VLAN policy for the port group that the adapter is
connected to.
MAC Address Changes
n
Reject — If you set the MAC Address Changes to Reject and the guest
operating system changes the MAC address of the adapter to anything
other than what is in the .vmx configuration file, all inbound frames
are dropped.
If the Guest OS changes the MAC address back to match the MAC
address in the .vmx configuration file, inbound frames are passed
again.
n
Accept — Changing the MAC address from the Guest OS has the
intended effect: frames to the new MAC address are received.
Forged Transmits
n
Reject — Any outbound frame with a source MAC address that is
different from the one currently set on the adapter are dropped.
n
Accept — No filtering is performed and all outbound frames are
passed.
5 Click OK.
Edit Distributed Port Security Policies
The three elements of the Security policy are promiscuous mode, MAC address changes, and forged
transmits.
In nonpromiscuous mode, a guest adapter listens to traffic only on its own MAC address. In promiscuous
mode, it can listen to all the packets. By default, guest adapters are set to non-promiscuous mode.
Prerequisites
Launch the vSphere Client and log in to a vCenter Server system.
Procedure
1 Log in to the vSphere Client and select the Networking inventory view.
2 Right-click the vSphere distributed switch in the inventory pane, and select Edit Settings.
3 On the Ports tab, right-click the port to modify and select Edit Settings.
4 Click Policies.
By default, Promiscuous Mode is set to Reject, MAC Address Changes, and Forged Transmits are set
to Accept.
vSphere Administration with the vSphere Client
272 VMware, Inc.