You select the network connection for VMware ESX Server through the VMware Management Interface. You can select a vmnic adapter, which connects the virtual machine to the physical network adapter, allowing the virtual machine to look and act as another computer on the network. Or you can connect the virtual machine to an internal network of other virtual machines by selecting a vmnet adapter. All the virtual machines on this host connected to a particular vmnet are on the same network.
Also, you need to select the network driver for this network connection. You can choose between the vlance driver, which installs automatically, and the vmxnet driver, which provides better network performance. The difference in network performance is most noticeable if the virtual machine is connected to a Gigabit Ethernet card.
If you choose vmxnet, you must configure the driver manually when you install VMware Tools in the guest operating system.
Note: If you use vmxnet in a Linux virtual machine, the virtual network device will not be visible to the guest operating system until you install VMware Tools in a Linux Guest. After you install VMware Tools, run netconfig or another network configuration utility in the virtual machine to set up the virtual network adapter.
If you need help determining which network adapter is associated with a particular device name, you can use the console operating system’s findnic command.
The format of the command is:
findnic <options> <nic-name> <local-ip> <remote-ip>
The findnic program takes a VMkernel network device name, an IP address to give the device on the local machine and an IP address that findnic should try to ping. When you issue the command, findnic pings the remote IP address.
This enables you to determine which adapter is which by looking at the LEDs on the cards to see which one has flashing lights or by seeing if the ping itself is successful.
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