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Jake
Asked: 2013-12-28 01:26:07 +0800 CST

What's the best method to list all active NICs and IP addresses in a vSphere cluster?

  • 772

I have ESXi 5.1 with many hosts in a cluster. I would like to generate a list of active NICs and thier IP addresses. Whats the easiest tool to generate such a list?

*I am not looking for the Virtual Hardware, only the Physical network hardware.

networking

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I would use VMware vSphere PowerCLI.

    It contains snapins of cmdlets based on Microsoft PowerShell for automating vSphere administration.

    It can be downloaded from here https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/details?downloadGroup=PCLI550&productId=353

    Below a sample powershell script i wrote to retrieve infos you want.

    Main points are :

    • Get-VMHost with -Location parameter to query a specific cluster (in case you have more than one and that you want to limit the query to just one, that is my case)
    • Get-VMHostNetworkAdapter with -Physical parameter to get only physical NICs.
    $myVCenter = "vcenter.dom"     #fqdn or ip of the VCenter Server
$myClusterName = "PROD"        #Name of the ESXi cluster
$user = "username"
$pass = "password"

Connect-VIServer "$myVCenter" -User $user -Password "$pass"

$myvmhosts = Get-VMHost -Location $myClusterName | select Name
foreach($myvmhost in $myvmhosts)
{
  Get-VMHostNetworkAdapter -Physical -VMHost $myvmhost.Name | select VMhost, Name, Mac, IP | format-table -autosize  | Out-String
}

    Will produce this output :

    VMHost       Name    Mac                 IP
------       ----    ---                 --
esxsrv1      vmnic0  d4:ae:52:9e:7f:ad
esxsrv1      vmnic1  d4:ae:52:9e:7f:af
esxsrv1      vmnic2  d4:ae:52:9e:7f:b1
esxsrv1      vmnic3  d4:ae:52:9e:7f:b3
esxsrv1      vmnic4  00:10:18:e4:80:24
esxsrv1      vmnic5  00:10:18:e4:80:25
esxsrv1      vmnic6  00:10:18:dc:12:e0
esxsrv1      vmnic7  00:10:18:dc:12:e2

VMHost       Name    Mac                 IP
------       ----    ---                 --
esxsrv2      vmnic0  d4:ae:52:98:29:6e
esxsrv2      vmnic1  d4:ae:52:98:29:70
esxsrv2      vmnic2  d4:ae:52:98:29:72
esxsrv2      vmnic3  d4:ae:52:98:29:74
esxsrv2      vmnic4  00:10:18:e4:86:6e
esxsrv2      vmnic5  00:10:18:e4:86:6f
esxsrv2      vmnic6  00:10:18:dc:20:20
esxsrv2      vmnic7  00:10:18:dc:20:22

    And so on for each ESXi server in the cluster...

    In my VMWare architecture i don'y have IP on physical NICs, but if you have ones they will be displayed.

    Another usefull tool is RVTools. No need to write scripts. Install the tool, launch it and login, and you will have all infos, with filters and export possibilities.

    • 3

  2. Load up PowerCLI,

    Connect to your Vcenter server. 

    Connect-VIServer <servername>

    Then run

    Get-VMHostNetworkAdapter

    and a list of all nics and thier IP address are listed.

    To export to a CSV

    Get-VMHostAdapter | Export-Csv C:\list.csv
    • 1