How to use vicfg-nics.pl

The commands vicfg-nics.pl (esxcfg-nics.pl) are used to manage the physical NIC ports in your ESXi host. The VMkernel will identify each NIC port as vmnicX where X is a number starting with 0. The following options are available

–list (-l) – this will list the current NIC ports in the system including VMkernel name, PCI Id, driver used, link status, speed, duplex, MTU and a short description.
–auto (-a) <vmnic> – this will set the network port to auto negotiate speed and duplex settings
–duplex (-d) [ full | half | <vmnic> – this option will set the duplex to either full or half. If setting this option ensure that the physical switch port is set to the same value
— speed (-s) [ 10 | 100 | 1000 ] <vmnic> – this will set the speed of the NIC port and should also match the setting on the physical switch port.

Sample Session

vicfg-nics.pl –server 192.168.1.40 –username root –list

Name   PCI     Driver Link Speed    Duplex MTU  Description
vmnic0 05:00.0 e1000  Up   1000Mbps Full   1500 Intel Corporation Bobs NIC

vicfg-nics.pl –server 192.168.1.40 –username root –speed 1000 –duplex Full vmnic0
Invlaid duplex parmeter given.

vicfg-nics.pl –server 192.168.1.40 –username root –speed 1000 –duplex full vmnic0
Update the vmnic0 to speed 1000 and full mode

vicfg-nics.pl –server 192.168.1.40 –username root -l

Name   PCI     Driver Link Speed    Duplex MTU  Description
vmnic0 05:00.0 e1000  Up   1000Mbps Full   1500 Intel Corporation Bobs NIC

vicfg-nics.pl –server 192.168.1.40 –username root –auto vmnic0
Update the vmnic0 to auto settings

These options can also be set in the VI client. The first image below shows a summary for the NICs in the system. The “Observed IP ranges” column shows the subnets that the VMkernel can see based on network broadcasts. The IP range shown here does not limit the IP range you can use in your VMs and the range shown can often be inaccurate, especially if you are dealing with VLANs. The settings can be changed by selecting Configuration \ Networking and then by editing the vSwitch of which the NIC port is a member of.

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