- [Instructor] The virtual machines we install
on a hypervisor might need to talk
with one another or maybe they need to talk out
to the rest of the world.
To do that they're going to need to use
a Virtual Network Interface Card or a Virtual NIC.
A Virtual NIC is going to have it's own MAC address
and it's going to be used by that virtual machine
to communicate to other devices.
Maybe I have three different virtual machines
and they each have their own Virtual NICs.
So we've got Virtual NIC-1, two and three here on screen.
How do they get out to the rest of the world?
Well, they're going to use a Virtual Switch
which is software supported by our hypervisor
that's going to connect different NICs together.
Those NICs might be virtual NICs.
They might be physical NICs.
For example, here if we want to get out
to the rest of the world we're going to need a Virtual Switch
and that virtual switch can connect out
to one of the physical Network Interface Cards
on our server to get us out
to the rest of the world.
Now, you don't have to connect to a physical NIC.
You could have a Virtual Switch, for example,
sitting between a Virtual Router and another Virtual Router
and maybe connected off of that Virtual Switch
we have some VMs.
So it doesn't have to connect us
to a physical NIC but it certainly could.
And again CISCO doesn't specify
that we need to know how to set up
a particular type of hypervisor
but I thought it would deepen our understanding
just to see a Virtual Switch set up.
So similar to what we did in our previous video
where I should you how to set up a Virtual Router
let's see how to set up a Virtual Switch.
Again using that VMware ESXi host.
To create a Virtual Switch
we're going to go under Networking.
And then we'll say Virtual Switches.
And we want to add a Virtual Switch.
And we'll give it a name.
I'll just call this VSWITCH1.
And if I have an uplink available
on this physical server,
in other words a Network Interface Card
that's not already associated with a Virtual Switch
then I can choose it here.
And the physical server that I'm using
has four different NICs on it physically
but only one is currently unassigned
and it's vmnic1.
And I'll select that one.
And we'll say add.
And that adds my Virtual Switch.
But when we're installing a Virtual Machine
and we're trying to plug it into the network virtually
if you remember from the previous video
it asked for a port group to connect into.
What we need to do is to create
one or more port groups on this Virtual Switch.
Here's how we do that.
I'm going to go to Port groups
and I'll say I want to add a port group.
And I'll give this a name of PG,
for port group, hyphen VSWITCH1
and I want to associate that with
the VSWITCH1 that I just created.
And I'll say add.
And we can look at logically
how this vSwitch is connected by clicking on it.
Let's go back to Virtual Switches
and click on VSWITCH1.
And here we see a representation
of how this is connected.
I'm going out to the physical adaptor of VM NIC-1.
I've got VM NIC-0, one, two, and three on this server.
So I'm looking at the back of my physical server
This would be my second NIC
and I've defined a port group
which is the way for Virtual Machines
to get into the Switch and therefore
out to the rest of the world
over that physical adapter.