Adding a VMNIC to VDS getting failed with Error - A specified parameter was not correct

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

This article provides information about vUSB0/PGUSB0 .

• vUSB0  - The 'vusb0' interface is the Ethernet-over-Universal Serial Bus (USB) device to communicate between the systems Integrated Management Module (IMM) or Integrated Management Module II (IMM2) and the VMware operating system.
• It is not a physical Ethernet device and by design is not allowed to be a physical Network Interface Controller (pNIC).
•  During the ESXi installation process, the hardware BIOS automatically creates a BM_C vSwitch and VMkernel (vmk), which remain active until the installation is completed successfully.
• The hardware BIOS (Firmware) has pushed the standard switch and PGUSB0/vUSB0 (which is not a real NIC) under the name PGUSB0/vUSB0.
  
  Note - It's important to note that this should not be treated as a PNIC. 

Environment

 

ESXi 7.0, U1, U2, U3c, U3d, U3e, U3f, U3g

Cause

• On a new installation of ESXi, we might observe the new Network Virtual Switch and VMK1 network, which are associated with an APIPA dynamic IP address assigned to PGVUSB0/vUSB0.
• If users utilize this for VM or VMK purposes, they may encounter disconnection issues. 
• ESXi does not consider this as a  physical Network Interface Controller (pNIC).

For example, If the vUSB0 adapter is in standby mode or is unused adapter, it will still appear as an available adapter when adding a any NIC to a Virtual Distributed Switch (VDS). If we try to add any NIC to VDS it will fail with an error below.

Resolution

• ESXi will not allow adding a VMNIC to a vSwitch/vDS unless the vUSB0 adapter is activated on other switches within the ESXi environment.
• To resolve this, ensure the vUSB0 adapter is set to active in another switch, or disable it.
• Disabling vUSB0 requires engagement with the hardware vendor, as VMware does not have control over the BIOS-pushed vSwitch and vUSB0.
• From the ESXi UI, you can remove the BIOS-pushed vSwitch and vUSB0, but they will reappear after an ESXi server reboot.