vSwitches disappear after rebooting an ESXi/ESX host

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• vSwitches are not loaded or do not show up after a reboot.
• The ESXi/ESX sysboot.log file (located at /vmfs/volumes/uuid/logs) contains the error:
  
  45.restore-networking: unknown error 2
  
  
• The messages log (located at /var/log), contains entries similar to:
  
  vmkernel: 0:00:08:36.065 cpu6:9310)Uplink: 11257: Parking portset pps already created.
  vmkernel: 0:00:08:36.066 cpu6:9310)WARNING: NetPortset: 676: vSwitch1: too many ports on system already (8320, limit is 4608)

Environment

VMware ESX 4.1.x
VMware ESX 4.0.x
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Embedded
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Embedded
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Installable
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Installable
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.1

Cause

This issue occur when the total number of ports exceeds 4608.

Resolution

The configuration file esx.conf (located at /etc/vmware) shows virtual switches correctly but the user interface does not reflect the correct configuration. When the total number of ports exceeds 4608 the virtual switches are dropped. The total number of ports for vSwitch is 4088. If you create one vSwitch with 4088 ports and a second with 4088 ports. The second vSwitch is not initialized on the boot because the port total is 8176.

To resolve this issue, set the second vSwitch with a lower number of ports and reboot the host. For more information, see Change the number of ports for vSwitch in the ESXi InstallableGuide.