Ran out of ports on vmware switch now what?

This is a common issue… you have run out of ports on your dVS or virtual switch port group.   You are running a Static binding port which means you have a set number of total ports and no more.  How do you fix it? There are two ways:

  • Increase the number of ports
  • Enabled auto-expand

Increase the number of ports:

-Remember that static binds assign a port per virtual machine… it does not matter if it is powered on or not as long as it’s on the port group it get’s a static port.  To increase the number of ports in the web client (5.1) do the following:

  • Click vcenter
  • Click Distributed Switches
  • Select your dV switch
  • Select your port group
  • Click Manage and Settings
  • Select Edit

Adjust the number of ports and click ok.

Enabled auto-expand:

To increase the number of ports in the web client (5.1) do the following:

  • Click vcenter
  • Click Distributed Switches
  • Select your dV switch
  • Select your port group
  • Click Manage and Settings
  • Select Edit

This time choose port allocation and select Elastic and click ok.

Just remember that new ports are allocated on dVS switches by vcenter and it has to be available to provide ports.

You can also automate this with vMA using the following command:

updatedvPortgroupAutoExpand.pl --operation enable --dvportgroup portgroupname

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