Increasing the maximum number of vNetwork Distributed Switch (vDS) ports designated for an ESXi 5.0/5.1 host

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

This article provides steps to increase the maximum number of vNetwork Distributed Switch (vDS) ports designated for an ESXi 5.0/5.1 host.

 

Note: You may have to increase the maximum number of ports even if you have increased the maximum number of vNetwork Distributed Switch because a limit of 256 is set for ESXi hosts.

Symptoms:

When cloning a virtual machine that is part of a virtual Distributed Switch (vDS), you see this error:

Can not create DVPort port_number dvSwitch of VDS on the host-hostname fault.Dvs.Fault.summary

Resolution

You can increase the maximum number of ports when the host is added to the vDS or change it later. The minimum possible number of ports per ESXi host is 8, while the maximum is 1024.

To increase the maximum number of ports on the ESXi 5.0/5.1 host during the creation of the vNetwork Distributed switch:

1. Log in to vCenter Server using the vSphere Client.
2. Click Home > Networking.
3. Right-click your datacenter and click New vSphere Distributed Switch.
4. Select the default option, vSphere Distributed Switch Version:5.0.0, and click Next.
   
   Note: When you select this option, all ESX/ESXi host should be upgraded to ESXi 5.0 or later.
   
   
5. Type the name of dvSwitch and the number of uplink ports.
6. Click Next.
7. Select the Add now option to add the ESXi host to the vNetwork Distributed Switch.
8. Click the Settings hyperlink at the top.
9. Select the maximum number of ports using the dropdown and click OK.
   
   Note: Alternatively:
   
   
   1. Click View Details next to the ESXi host
   2. Set the maximum number of ports using the dropdown and click OK.
      
      
10. Select all ESXi hosts and vmnics you want to add to vNetwork Distributed Switch (vDS) and click Next.
11. Click Finish to complete the configuration.

To increase the maximum number of ports on the ESXi 5.0/5.1 host when you have already configured the vNetwork Distributed Switch:

1. Log in to vCenter Server using the vSphere Client.
2. Click Home > Hosts and Clusters.
3. Select the host on which you want to increase number of vDS ports.
4. Click the Configuration tab.
5. Click Networking under Hardware.
6. Click vSphere Distributed Switch.
7. Click Properties and change the maximum number of ports designated to this host using the dropdown.
8. Reboot the ESXi host for changes to take effect.

Notes:

• For increasing the maximum number of vNetwork Distributed switch ports in vSphere 4.x, see Increasing the maximum number of vNetwork Distributed Switch (vDS) ports in vSphere (1038193)
• If increasing the maximum number of vNetwork Distributed switch ports does not resolve the issue, open a support request with VMware Support and reference this article.

Additional Information

Increasing the maximum number of vNetwork Distributed Switch (vDS) ports in vSphere