6.0.1

Network Adapters and Legacy Virtual Machines
Legacy virtual machines are virtual machines that are supported by the product in use, but are not current
for that product. The default network adapter types for all legacy virtual machines depend on the adapters
available and compatible to the guest operating system and the version of virtual hardware on which the
virtual machine was created.
If you do not upgrade a virtual machine to correspond with an upgrade to a newer version of an ESXi host,
your adapter settings remain unchanged. If you upgrade your virtual machine to take advantage of newer
virtual hardware, your default adapter settings will likely change to be compatible with the guest operating
system and upgraded host hardware.
To verify the network adapters that are available to your supported guest operating system for a particular
version of vSphere ESXi, see the VMware Compatibility Guide at
http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility.
Change the Virtual Machine Network Adapter Configuration
To change the way the virtual machine communicates with the host or other virtual machines over the
network, you can change the power-on connection setting, the MAC address, and the network connection
for the virtual network adapter configuration for a virtual machine.
For information 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.
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.
If the virtual machine runs on a Cisco UCS server, the drop-down menu also shows the port profiles
that are available on the Cisco UCS Virtual Machine Fabric Extender (VM-FEX) distributed switch.
3 (Optional) Change the Status settings.
Option Description
Connected
Select or deselect this option while the virtual machine is running to
connect or disconnect the virtual network adapter. This check box is not
available when the virtual machine is turned off.
Connect at power on
Select this option for the virtual network adapter to connect to the network
when the virtual machine turns on. If you do not check 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.
Chapter 6 Configuring Virtual Machine Hardware
VMware, Inc. 105