Questions: 14th April, 2015:

1 - Definition of Port Group?

A 'Port Group' is a group of ports on a vSwitch. A Port Group is an endpoint for
connecting VMs. You can think of port groups as templates for creating virtual
ports with particular sets of specifications.
Template for one or more ports with a common configuration
VLAN Assignment
Security
Traffic Shaping (limit egress traffic from VM)
Failover & Load Balancing
2 - What is Ring buffer?
A circular buffer, cyclic buffer or ring buffer is a data structure that uses a
single, fixed-size buffer as if it were connected end-to-end. This structure len
ds itself easily to buffering data streams.
The ring buffer's first-in first-out data structure is useful tool for transmitt
ing data between asynchronous processes
VMXNET3 supports larger Tx/Rx ring buffer sizes compared to previous generations
of virtual network
devices. This feature benefits certain network workloads with bursty and highpeak
throughput. Having a
larger ring size provides extra buffering to better cope with transient packet b
ursts. VMXNET3 supports three
interrupt modes: MSIX, MSI, and INTx. Normally the VMXNET3 guest driver will atte
mpt to use the
interrupt modes in the order given above, if the guest kernel supports them
KB: Large packet loss at the guest OS level on the VMXNET3 vNIC in ESXi 5.x / 4.
x (2039495)
*Tentative(Not Sure): 3 - How to access vSwitch Console?
vSwitch can be created and configured by CLI on ESXi.
http://blog.scottlowe.org/2010/08/23/new-users-guide-to-configuring-vmware-esxinetworking-via-cli/
4 - Switch Advanced Parameters?
IPv6 setting and VM DirectpathIO
5 - No of vSwitchses on a host recommendation.....Why?
Conflicting info...Please find attached screenshot.
6 - *What happens when a vSwitch dies?
7 - *Discovered issues on vSwitch?
8 - Can a portgroup of a Live VM be changed?
Yes.
9 - the info symbol next to mgmt n/w
There would be 2 Info icons fr every vmkernel port.

The one next to the port name gives info about the port settings(Security, Traff
ic shaping and NIC teaming)
The one next to the IP address gives info about the IP address, Default gateway,
DNS, MAC, etc.
10 - TCP\IPCongiurations and Advanced
TCP\IP stacks
IPv6 setting and VM DirectpathIO
11 - Single license key for all products.
No for different products
Can be done for same product and same version in consideration with compliance l
imits
13 - Can we use legacy license server for new product license? KB2014295
Yes
14 - Max no of licenses per vCenter
Unlimited...No official doc to support
15 - Max number of uplinks:
e1000 1Gb Ethernet ports (Intel PCI-x) 32
e1000e 1Gb Ethernet ports (Intel PCI-e) 24
igb 1Gb Ethernet ports (Intel) 16
tg3 1Gb Ethernet ports (Broadcom) 32
bnx2 1Gb Ethernet ports (Broadcom) 16
forcedeth 1Gb Ethernet ports (NVIDIA) 2
nx_nic 10Gb Ethernet ports (NetXen) 8
ixgbe 10Gb Ethernet ports (Intel) 8
bnx2x 10Gb Ethernet ports (Broadcom) 8
be2net 10Gb Ethernet ports (Emulex) 8
16 - VSS vs VDS
Overview of vNetwork Distributed Switch concepts (1010555)
17 - CDP update frequency
Default CDP timer: 60 seconds
18 - Duplex settings use cases & Speed setting changes use cases:
Configuring the speed and duplex of an ESXi or ESX host network adapter (1004089
)
19 - Max events shown and archived events location:
1000 max
C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\Infrastructure\vSphere PowerCLI
> Get-VIEvent > c:\event.txt
20 - TCP/IP stacks:
The VMkernel Networking Layer: The VMkernel networking layer provides connectivi
ty to hosts and handles the standard infrastructure traffic of vSphere vMotion,
IP storage, Fault Tolerance, and Virtual SAN. You can set up VMkernel adapters f
or the standard infrastructure traffic on vSphere standard switches and on vSphe
re distributed switches.
TCP/IP Stacks at the VMkernel Level: The default TCP/IP stack at the VMkernel le

vel provides networking support for the standard infrastructure types of traffic
. You can add custom TCP/IP stacks at the VMkernel level and forward networking
traffic through custom applications.
Create a Custom TCP/IP Stack
You can create a custom TCP/IP stack on a host to forward VMkernel traffic throu
gh a custom application.
Procedure
1: Open an SSH connection to the host.
2: Log in as the root user.
3: Run the following vSphere CLI command:
esxcli network ip netstack add -N="stack_name"
The custom TCP/IP stack is created on the host. You can assign VMkernel adapters
to the stack.
21 - Loss less connection for FCoe?
1. Losslessness & Congestion: Fiber Channel is a lossless protocol, so no frames
can be lost. Since classic Ethernet has no flow control, unlike Fibre Channel,
FCoE requires enhancements to the Ethernet standard to support a flow control me
chanism to prevents frame loss. One of the problems with Ethernet networks is th
at when a congestion condition arises, packets will be dropped (lost) if there i
s no adequate flow control mechanism. A flow control method that is similar to t
he buffer to buffer credit method on Fiber Channel is needed for FCoE.
FCoE uses a flow control PAUSE mechanism, similar to buffer-to-buffer credits in
FC, to ask a transmitting device to hold off sending any more frames until the
receiving device says its ok to resume. However, the PAUSE mechanism is not inte
lligent and could possibly pause all traffic, not just FCoE traffic. To overcome
this, the quality of service (QoS) priority bit in the VLAN tag of the Ethernet
frame is used to differentiate the traffic types on the network. Ethernet can n
ow be thought of as being divided into 8 virtual lanes based on the QoS priority
bit in the VLAN tag.
Different policies such as losslessness, bandwidth allocation and congestion con
trol can be applied these virtual lanes individually. If congestion arises and t
here is a need to pause the Fiber Channel traffic (i.e. the target is busy process
ing, and wants the source to hold off sending any more frames), then there must
be a way of pausing the FC traffic without impacting other network traffic using
the wire. Lets say that FCoE, VM traffic, VMotion traffic, management traffic &
FT traffic are all sharing the same 10Gb pipe. If we have congestion with FCoE,
we may want to pause it. However, we dont want to pause all traffic, just FCoE. W
ith standard ethernet, this is not possible you have to pause everything. So we
need an enhancement to pause one class of traffic while allowing the rest of the
traffic to flow. PFC (Priority based Flow Control) is an extension of the curren
t Ethernet pause mechanism, sometimes called Per-Priority PAUSE. using per prior
ity pause frames. This way we can pause traffic with a specific priority and all
ow all other traffic to flow (e.g. pause FCoE traffic while allowing other netwo
rk traffic to flow).
2. Bandwidth: there needs to be a mechanism to reduce or increase bandwidth. Aga
in, with a 10Gb pipe, we want to be able to use as much of the pipe as possible
when other traffic classes are idle. For instance, if weve allocated 1Gb of the 1
0Gb pipe for vMotion traffic, we want this to be available to other traffic type
s when there are no vMotion operations going on, and similarly we want to dedica
te it to vMotion traffic when there are vMotions. Again, this is not achievable
with standard ethernet so we need some way of implementing this. ETS (Enhanced T
ransmission Selection) provides a means to allocate bandwidth to traffic that ha
s a particular priority. The protocol supports changing the bandwidth dynamicall

y.
DCBX Data Center Bridging Exchange
Data Center Bridging Exchange (DCBX) is a protocol that allows devices to discov
er & exchange their capabilities with other attached devices. This protocol ensu
res a consistent configuration across the network. The three purposes of DCBX ar
e:
Discover Capabilities: The ability for devices to discover and identify capabili
ties of other devices.
Identify misconfigurations: The ability to discover misconfigurations of feature
s between devices. Some features can be configured differently on each end of a
link whilst other features must be configured identically on both sides. This f
unctionality allows detection of configuration errors.
Configuration of Peers: A capability allowing DCBX to pass configuration informa
tion to a peer.
DCBX relies on Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) in order to pass this config
uration information. LLDP is an industry standard version of Cisco Discovery Pro
tocol (CDP) which allows devices to discover one another and exchange informatio
n about basic capabilities. This is why we need to bind a VMkernel port to a vSw
itch. Frames will be forwarded to the userworld dcdb process via the CDP VMkern
el module to do DCBX. The CDP VMkernel module does both CDP & LLDP. This is an i
mportant point to note the FCoE traffic does not go through the vSwitch. However
we need the vSwitch binding so that the frames will be forwarded to the dcbd in
userworld through the CDP VMkernel module for DCBx negotiation. The vSwitch is
NOT for FCoE data traffic.