Use the Network Connections option to configure the network adapters assigned to the virtual machines. This option allows you to change the speed and duplex settings of the adapters and to assign the virtual machine network adapter to a teamed NIC.
When you use the VMware Management Interface to configure network settings for the Ethernet adapters assigned to virtual machines, you see the actual speed and duplex settings for each adapter. If the adapter is configured to Autonegotiate, these settings are automatically negotiated by the adapter. If these settings are not appropriate, choose the settings you want from the Configured Speed, Duplex list.
Note: If you change the network speed setting for an adapter, you must reboot the server for the change to take effect.
If you want to use NIC teaming with the network adapter, in the NIC Team list, select the bond to use. For more information, see www.vmware.com/support/esx2/doc/ esx20admin_netwk6.html.
When Windows virtual machines are configured in a clustering setup (for example, using MSCS), some disk errors are recorded in the Windows event log in normal operation. These error messages have a format similar to:
The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Scsi\BusLogic3
They should be reported periodically only on the passive node of the cluster and should also be reported when the passive node is taking over during a failover. The errors are reported because the active node of the cluster has reserved the shared virtual disk. The passive node periodically probes the shared disk and receives a SCSI reservation conflict error.
For more details on setting up clustering with ESX Server, see the technical note Configuration for Clustering. You can find the technical note on the VMware Web site at www.vmware.com/pdf/ESXCluster.pdf.
If the network adapter being used by the console operating system is not running in full duplex mode and you want to force it into that mode, you can do so by adding the appropriate parameters to the file /etc/modules.conf. If you want to load the module manually, note that insmod does not read /etc/modules.conf, so you need to use modprobe to pick up parameters specified in that file. Always specify the module name (such as 3c59x) - not the alias (such as eth0) - on an options line.
Sample options lines:
options 3c59x full_duplex=1 options=4
options bcm5700 line_speed=1000 auto_speed=0 full_duplex=1
options e100 e100_speed_duplex=4
options e1000 Speed=1000 Duplex=2
The Network Labels feature allows you to specify a network label for adapters that are used by virtual machines. These labels appear when you configure NIC teaming for virtual machine network drivers and device binding for network adapters.