Adding and Removing the 2nd Mellanox Ethernet Port as an uplink to an Existing Vswitch using the CLI

At VSphere 5.1 Client. I was able to see the Dual-Port Network Adapter (vmnic22.p1, vmnic22.p2) after I install the Vmware Installing Mellanox ConnectX® EN 10GbE Drivers for VMware® ESX 5.x Server.

But somehow I am not able to use the 2nd port of the Mellanox ConnectX 10G on the VSphere Client > Configuration > Networking. It will not be visible. However at the VSphere Client > Configuration > Networking > Add Networking, I not able to see the 2nd Port being available.

I found the document from Mellanox (MellanoxMLX4_ENDriverforVMwareESXi-5.xREADME) which is useful to resolve the issue.

At Page 10, Adding the Device as an uplink to an Existing Vswitch using the CLI

Step 1: Log into the ESXi server with root permission

Step 2: Add an uplink to a vswitch, run:

# esxcli network vswitch standard uplink add –u <uplink_name> -v <vswitch_name>

* Uplink_name refer to the name used by ESX for the network Adapter. For example, vmnic22.p2 is the uplink name

Step 3: Check that uplink was added successfully. Run:

# esxcli network vswitch standard list -v <vswitch_name>

Removing the Device an an uplink to an Existing Vswitch using the CLI

Step 1: Log into the ESXi server with root permissions Step 2: Remove an uplink from a vswitch, run:

# esxcli network vswitch standard uplink remove -u <uplink_name> -v <vswitch_name>