I have a host that has a single NIC attached to vSwitch0. The vSwitch still works, as it is the management interface and I can still work with the host just fine, but I cannot get the NIC to go active so the physical network can see the vSwitch.

I tried to set the policy to active from the commandline using:

vim-cmd hostsvc/net/vswitch_setpolicy --nicorderpolicy-active=vmnic1 vSwitch0

But I get this response:

(vmodl.fault.InvalidArgument) {
dynamicType = <unset>,
faultCause = (vmodl.MethodFault) null,
invalidProperty = <unset>,
msg = "A specified parameter was not correct.
",
}

Any ideas?

Have you tried it without "vSwitch0"?

Yeah, it says a required parameter is missing, which I presume was the switch target for the NIC.

In any case, the machine is on its way back to me, so I'll be able to dig into it a little more. It started crashing frequently, so I had my client box it up and ship it to me. There's probably a hardware failure causing this given the spectacular fashion in which it decided to die.

Of course, it's Murphy's Statistcal Rule of Failure - the probability of a mission-critical machine failing rises proportionally to the square of the distance from the person responsible for it.