DeWalt MD3220I manual

Dell PowerVault MD32xxi Configuration Guide for VMware ESX4.1 Server Software

Switch Name	Num Ports	Used Ports	Configured Ports	MTU Uplinks
vSwitch2	64	9	64	9000 vmnic3,vmnic2
PortGroup Name VLAN ID Used Ports			Uplinks
iSCSI6		0	1	vmnic2,vmnic3
iSCSI5		0	1	vmnic2,vmnic3
iSCSI4		0	1	vmnic2,vmnic3
iSCSI3		0	1	vmnic2,vmnic3
iSCSI2		0	1	vmnic2,vmnic3
iSCSI1		0	1	vmnic2,vmnic3

You can see that there are two vmnics in each uplink for each VMkernel Port. This is what we need to change so that only a single vmnic is in each uplink and that we manually load balance them across all available VMkernel Ports.

To configure this process via CLI first note the vmnic number of the NICs you want to remove and type the following command:

esxcfg-vswitch –p iSCSI1 –N vmnic3 vSwitch2

What this will do is remove vmnic3 from VMkernel port iSCSI1 so that just vmnic2 is on iSCSI1.

We then need to do the same thing for the other 4 VMkernel ports making sure to remove vmnics so that an equal number of VMkernel ports are on each vmnic (3 per vmnic).

esxcfg-vswitch –p iSCSI2 –N vmnic3 vSwitch2 esxcfg-vswitch –p iSCSI3 –N vmnic3 vSwitch2 esxcfg-vswitch –p iSCSI4 –N vmnic2 vSwitch2 esxcfg-vswitch –p iSCSI5 –N vmnic2 vSwitch2 esxcfg-vswitch –p iSCSI6 –N vmnic2 vSwitch2

In an example where there are 3 or more vmnics, you would remove each one from the vSwitch to make sure there is only a single vmnic per uplink.

To verify that this was done correctly type the following command:

esxcfg-vswitch –l

The output will look similar to this:
Switch Name	Num Ports	Used Ports	Configured Ports	MTU Uplinks
vSwitch2	64	9	64	9000 vmnic3,vmnic2
PortGroup Name VLAN ID Used Ports			Uplinks
iSCSI6		0	1	vmnic3
iSCSI5		0	1	vmnic3
iSCSI4		0	1	vmnic3
iSCSI3		0	1	vmnic2
iSCSI2		0	1	vmnic2
iSCSI1		0	1	vmnic2

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