VMware Standard Virtual Switch

Network setup for ESXi hosts can consist of several parts:

• Setting up one or more virtual switches. Virtual switches provide the connectivity between virtual machines on the same host or on different hosts. Virtual switches also support VMkernel network access for VMotion, iSCSI, and NFS. You set up virtual switches independently on each host. See Adding a Standard Virtual Switch.
• Adding virtual machine port groups. A virtual machine always accesses the network through a port group. See Adding a Virtual Port Group.
• Specifying the adapter for the virtual machine. This adapter is specified as a virtual device, configured as part of virtual machine setup, and discussed in Configuring a Virtual Machine.
• Adding VMkernel network interfaces, for example, to support iSCSI storage or VMotion. See Adding a VMkernel Network Interface.
• Configuring a physical adapter (pnic), the actual connection from the host to the network. You can configure the pnic through the HostNetworkSystem.pnic property, which is a PhysicalNic data object. You can specify the set of pnics associated with a virtual switch through the VirtualSwitch.pnic property, which takes an array of physical network adapters.
• Network configuration for the host (IP routing, DNS, SNMP). See Adding Networking Services.