6.7

Number of Standard Ports
To ensure efficient use of host resources on ESXi hosts, the number of ports of standard switches are
dynamically scaled up and down. A standard switch on such a host can expand up to the maximum
number of ports supported on the host.
Create a vSphere Standard Switch
Create a vSphere Standard Switch to provide network connectivity for hosts, virtual machines, and to
handle VMkernel traffic. Depending on the connection type that you want to create, you can create a new
vSphere Standard Switch with a VMkernel adapter, only connect physical network adapters to the new
switch, or create the switch with a virtual machine port group.
Procedure
1 In the vSphere Web Client, navigate to the host.
2 On the Configure tab, expand Networking and select Virtual switches.
3 Click Add host networking.
4 Select a connection type for which you want to use the new standard switch and click Next.
Option Description
VMkernel Network Adapter Create a new VMkernel adapter to handle host management traffic, vMotion,
network storage, fault tolerance, or vSAN traffic.
Physical Network Adapter Add physical network adapters to an existing or a new standard switch.
Virtual Machine Port Group for a
Standard Switch
Create a new port group for virtual machine networking.
5 Select New standard switch and click Next.
6 Add physical network adapters to the new standard switch.
a Under Assigned adapters, click Add adapters.
b Select one or more physical network adapters from the list.
c From the Failover order group drop-down menu, select from the Active or Standby failover lists.
For higher throughput and to provide redundancy, configure at least two physical network
adapters in the Active list.
d Click OK.
vSphere Networking
VMware, Inc. 18