Symptoms:
Sysadmins may need to temporarily disable a vmknic, perform troubleshooting, and then re-enable the vmknic.
$ esxcli network ip interface set -i <vmknic> -e false
$ esxcli network ip interface set -i <vmknic> -e true
The enable command may fail if the vmknic is on vSphere Distributed Switch( vDS), you may see an error similar to:
$ esxcli network ip interface set -i <vmknic> -e true
SysinfoException: Node (VSI_NODE_net_tcpip_instances_plumb) ; Status(bad0003)= Not found; Message= Instance(1):defaultTcpipStack Input(7) if=5 dvsId=50 ## a8 69 09 fb cf ##-## 8b 32 ## 7a a6 2c e6 portId=528 cnId=819161394 macaddr=00:##:56:##:8d:## tsomss=65535 mtu=1500
After disabling the vmknic the associated port may be reclaimed by vDS, so the port may not be available anymore when the vmknic is enabled again.