First off I want to thank Tom Verhaeg (blog/twitter) for providing this scenario. Tom had gotten in contact with myself and wanted to do what he can to help our with the 8 weeks of #VCAP series as he is going through a similar type process as me in studying for the VCAP5-DCA. So props to Tom for taking the time and initiative to give back. Hopefully we see more from him in the coming weeks! Even better for myself as I can run through some scenarios that I didn't make up 🙂 Be sure to follow Tom on Twitter and check out his blog Thanks for the help Tom!!!
Your company leverages the full Enterprise Plus licensing and has set up a Distributed vSwitch. Recently, the number of ports needed on a particular portgroup exceeded the number configured. You are tasked with creating a new Portgroup, called DvS_ProductionNetwork which only connects the running VM’s and also functions when vCenter is down.
Off we go again. So, let’s recall. There are 3 different options of port binding on a DvS.
Static binding – Which creates a port group with a manual set number of ports. A port is assigned whenever a vNIC is added to a VM. You can connect a vNIC static binding only through vCenter.
Dynamic binding (Deprecated in vSphere 5.0!) – A port is assigned to a vNIC when the VM is powered on, and it’s vNIC is in a connected state. You can connect this dynamic binding only through vCenter.
Empheral binding – A port is assigned to a vNIC when the VM is powered on, and it’s vNIC is in a connected state. This binding method allows the bypass of vCenter, allowing you to manage virtual machine networking when vCenter is down.
So, that’s the one we need! Empheral binding! Luckily, it’s quite simple to configure. Hop over to the networking inventory (Ctrl + Shift + N) and create the new port group. Give it a name and leave the number of ports on the default of 128.
Now edit the settings of this port group, and select the Empheral binding under the port binding dropdown. Also note, that the number of ports is greyed out now.
Hurray!
