Port groups created via CLI are not visible in UI

Products

• VMware vSphere ESX 7.x
• VMware vSphere ESX 8.x
• VMware vSphere ESXi
• VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0

Issue/Introduction

After using the esxcfg-vswitch command, it appears on the command line that the port group was successfully created.

# esxcfg-vswitch --add-pg=PG01 vSwitch0

# esxcfg-vswitch -l
Switch Name      Num Ports   Used Ports  Configured Ports  MTU     Uplinks
vSwitch0         3920        7           128               1500    vmnic0,vmnic1

  PortGroup Name                            VLAN ID  Used Ports  Uplinks
  PG01                                      0        0           vmnic0,vmnic1
...

But you can't see port groups in Host Client or vSphere Client.

Resolution

To create portgroup via CLI, use esxcli command instead of esxcfg-vswitch command.

See "A standard portgroup can be created on a Standard vSwitch with this command:" in Configuring Standard vSwitch (vSS) or virtual Distributed Switch (vDS) from the command line in ESXi