How to find the physical NIC that a VM is using on VMware vSphere ESXi

GrahamSeptember 21, 2016September 13, 2020no commentesxi network mapping pnic vnic

Have you ever needed to work out which physical NIC (pNIC) on an ESXi host is being used by a Virtual Machine?

Simply SSH to the host that the VM is runningon and run esxtop then press n

You’ll see something similar to the below:

Notice the VM names on the left under “USED-BY” and the physical NIC listed under “TEAM-PNIC” This is the VM to physical NIC mapping.

You can also see towards the right the bandwidth used by each VM via the MbTX/s and MbRx/s metrics on the right.

Graham

Graham is a seasoned expert in VMware and Microsoft solutions, bringing deep expertise from his 20 years' experience and senior engineering work at Tesla and Dell Technologies in the UK. He focuses on cutting-edge virtualization and storage projects. A VMware Certified Implementation Expert, 10x VMware vExpert, and Moderator on the official Broadcom forums, Graham is a trusted community resource. Connect with him on X.com for insights! https://x.com/VirtualG_UK

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