Step by step – configuring networking under ESX Server 3.x
You can see that there are 4 tabs in each item’s properties. Three tabs are common to all and these are – “security”, “traffic shaping” and “NIC teaming”. Let’s understand each of them in detail…
1. Security Tab – Under security tab as shown in screen shot there are following three options:
(a) Promiscuous mode
(b) MAC address changes
(c) Forged transmits
The dictionary meaning of promiscuous is irregular or random. By setting this option as “reject” virtual switch will reject all the packets which doesn’t have the network address of any device (virtual machines, vmkernel or service console) connected to that virtual switch. By setting it as “allow” virtual switch will accept the data even if it is not for the devices (virtual machines, vmkernel or service console) connected to this virtual switch. If you set this property at virtual machine port group then it will set it for only virtual machines in that particular port group. Suppose you have configured it as “allow” at vswitch level and reject at port group level then all data packets will be accepted at switch level and will be available to all port groups except for the ones in which you have configured it as “reject” at port group level. If you set it is “reject’ at vswitch level then all promiscuous data will be rejected for all port groups except for the one you have explicitly set to allow.
MAC address changes – If you set this option to “reject” then ESX server will reject all MAC address changes unless it is configured as “allow” explicitly at port group level.
