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Warning:
Once the management interface is disabled, you will have to log in on the physical host console to perform
management tasks and external interfaces such as XenCenter will no longer work.

Adding a new physical NIC

Install a new physical NIC on a XenServer host in the usual manner. Then, after restarting the server, run
the xe CLI command pif-scan to cause a new PIF object to be created for the new NIC.
NIC/PIF ordering in resource pools
It is possible for physical NIC devices to be discovered in different orders on different servers even though
the servers contain the same hardware. Verifying NIC ordering is recommended before using the pooling
features of XenServer.

Verifying NIC ordering

Use the pif-list command to verify that NIC ordering is consistent across your XenServer hosts. Review
the MAC address and carrier (link state) parameters associated with each PIF to verify that the devices
discovered (eth0, eth1, etc.) correspond to the appropriate physical port on the server.
xe pif-list params=uuid,device,MAC,currently-attached,carrier,management, \
IP-configuration-mode
uuid ( RO) : 1ef8209d-5db5-cf69-3fe6-0e8d24f8f518
device ( RO): eth0
MAC ( RO): 00:19:bb:2d:7e:8a
currently-attached ( RO): true
management ( RO): true
IP-configuration-mode ( RO): DHCP
carrier ( RO): true
uuid ( RO) : 829fd476-2bbb-67bb-139f-d607c09e9110
device ( RO): eth1
MAC ( RO): 00:19:bb:2d:7e:7a
currently-attached ( RO): false
management ( RO): false
IP-configuration-mode ( RO): None
carrier ( RO): true
If the hosts have already been joined in a pool, add the host-uuid parameter to the pif-list command to
scope the results to the PIFs on a given host.

Re-ordering NICs

It is not possible to directly rename a PIF, although you can use the pif-forget and pif-introduce commands
to achieve the same effect with the following restrictions:
• The XenServer host must be standalone and not joined to a resource pool.
• Re-ordering a PIF configured as the management interface of the host requires additional steps which are
included in the example below. Because the management interface must first be disabled the commands
must be entered directly on the host console.
For the example configuration shown above use the following steps to change the NIC ordering so that
eth0 corresponds to the device with a MAC address of 00:19:bb:2d:7e:7a: