VM /ETC

Posts Tagged ‘vnetwork distributed switch’

The vSphere Enterprise Plus vNetwork Distributed Switch (vDS) has been heralded as, and I might add lives up to it’s reputation of, an administrator’s time saver and single point of virtual networking configuration and visibility across many ESX/ESXi 4 hosts. However, the vDS presents some administrative challenges unique from the traditional vNetwork Standard Switch (vSS) that admins are used to. Specifically, since the vCenter 4 Server actually maintains the vDS configuration, some extra design thinking needs to be built into a vSphere 4 environment where a vDS will be used. If vCenter 4 Server itself will be a virtual machine in the environment with a vDS, the design gets even more involved.

There are a few possible problems to consider. In this post I’ll first cover (with the help of a several others) general VM and vCenter vDS networking issues, but along the way I’ll explore thoughts about designing around a vDS for keeping vCenter as a VM.

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http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1010718 explains the normal way for disabling and removing a VMware ESX/ESXi vNetwork Distributed Switch (vDS or DVS or VDS – LOL), but when I recently tried to do so I received the following error:

“The resource ’1′ is in use. DVS [vDS Name] port 1 is reserved by to entity <not-found.> vnic 4000, type:vmVnic”

The screen shot shows the actual error I received.

After thinking about that message, I decided to check to see if any ports were in fact being used on the vDS. Although PortID 1 dvPortGroups did not show it being used as expected, other PortIDs were, in fact, in use. See image below.

I tried messing around with disabling the ports (blocking was the terminology in the vSphere Client, I believe) but I still could not delete the vDS. It was Saturday and I had family stuff to do so I reluctantly gave up at the time. However, 3 days later I was able to easily remove it via the Remove link on vDS Configuration screen just like I was supposed to be able to do all along. Needless to say I was a bit perplexed.

After researching I discovered that

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