ESX command line examples

Here are a few of the really useful ones I have gotten comfortable with… See the man pages for more.

• Add a vswitch – ” esxcfg-vswitch -a vSwitch4 “
• Add a portgroup – ” esxcfg-vswitch -A "My New Portgroup" vSwitch4 “
• Add a VLAN tag – ” esxcfg-vswitch -p "My New Portgroup" -v 33 vSwitch4 “
• Add a NIC to a vswitch – ” esxcfg-vswitch -L vmnic2 vSwitch4 “
• Add a NIC to a portgroup – ” esxcfg-vswitch -M vmnic2 -p "My New Portgroup" vSwitch4 “
• Remove a NIC from a portgroup – ” esxcfg-vswitch -N vmnic2 -p "My Old Portgroup" vSwitch4 “
• Remove a portgroup – ” esxcfg-vswitch -D "My Old Portgroup" vSwitch4 “
• List your vswitches – ” esxcfg-vswitch -l “
• List your vswif NICs – ” esxcfg-vswif -l “
• List your vmkernel NICs – ” esxcfg-vmknic -l “
• List your physical NICs – ” esxcfg-nics -l “
• Add a vswif to a portgroup – ” esxcfg-vswif -a vswif7 -i 10.11.12.3 -n 255.255.255.192 -p "My New Portgroup" “
• Move a vswif to a different portgroup – ” esxcfg-vswif -p "new portgroup" vswif3 “
• Add a vmkernel NIC – ” esxcfg-vmknic -a -i 10.12.13.4 -n 255.255.255.192 "My Other New Portgroup" “
• Temporarily disable the firewall for troubleshooting purposes – ” esxcfg-firewall --allowIncoming --allowOutgoing “