Viewing Virtual Port Groups
Each virtual switch can have one or more port groups defined for it. Port group is a template that stores a set of configuration that is used to create virtual switch ports on a virtual switch. In other words, a port group captures all the settings necessary for a virtual switch port such as the virtual switch name, VLAN IDs and policies for tagging and filtering, teaming policy, Layer 2 security options, and traffic shaping parameters. When you want to connect a virtual machine to a particular kind of port, you can simply specify the name of a port group with an appropriate definition.
Network Director enables you to view details about all the port groups that are defined for a given virtual switch using the View Virtual Port Group page.
- While in Build mode with Virtual view selected, navigate to Virtual Network > vCenter IP address > vSwitches and select the virtual switch for which you want to view the virtual port details. From the Tasks pane, click View Virtual Port Groups from the Virtual Network Management menu to open the View Virtual Port Group page.
- The View Virtual Port Groups page displays the details
for all the virtual port groups for the selected virtual switch. Table 1 describes the
fields in this page:
Table 1: View Virtual Port Group Field Descriptions
Field
Description
Name
Name assigned to the virtual port group.
Number of Ports
Number of ports configured on this port group.
This field is not applicable for standalone virtual switches.
VLAN Range
The VLAN type and the applicable VLAN range. The VLAN type can be:
- Private VLAN
- Access VLAN
- Trunk VLAN
The Trunk VLAN is recommended for uplink port groups. For a standalone virtual switch, only Access VLAN is applicable.
Group Type
The type of port group. Port group type can be Uplink or Access.
Switch Type
The type of virtual switch. The switch type can be:
- Standalone vSwitch—The traditional virtual switch where the administrator configures and maintains a virtual switch for each host.
- Distributed vSwitch—A distributed switch spans multiple hosts at the virtual network level. It is created by abstracting individual host-level virtual switches into a single large distributed switch. This considerably simplifies the virtual machine networking by enabling you to set up virtual machine access switching for your entire datacenter from a centralized interface.
