Two weeks ago I wrote an article about How To Bring Down A Single NIC In ESX?. In that post you could see that in order to test this you had to go into the console of the ESX and run the commands on the console.
Already then I was thinking, why not do this from PowerCLI, without having to log into each host.
So here we go..
For the examples sake:
| VI Server | vcenter.maishsk.local |
| ESX Host for Testing | esx1.maishsk.local |
| vmnic for Redundancy test | vmnic2 |
1: function Test-NetworkFO ($vmhost, $vmnic, $switch) {
2:
3: If ($switch){
4: ##Define which NIC should be tested
5: $mynic = Get-VMHostNetworkAdapter -VMHost (get-vmhost $vmhost) | `
6: Where-Object { $_.DeviceName -eq $vmnic }
7:
8: ##Bring the NIC down
9: Set-VMHostNetworkAdapter -PhysicalNic $mynic -Duplex Half -BitRatePerSecMb 10
10: }
11:
12: If (-not $switch){
13: ##Define which NIC should be tested
14: $mynic = Get-VMHostNetworkAdapter -VMHost (get-vmhost $vmhost) | `
15: Where-Object { $_.DeviceName -eq $vmnic }
16:
17: ##Bring the NIC back up
18: Set-VMHostNetworkAdapter -PhysicalNic $mynic -AutoNegotiate
19: }
20: }
21:
22: # Turn it on
23: Test-NetworkF0 "vcenter.maishsk.local" "vmnic2" $true
24:
25: # Turn it off
26: Test-NetworkF0 "vcenter.maishsk.local" "vmnic2" $false
This is a way to test your Network Redundancy for your ESX hosts.
I would like to thank Alan Renouf - who helped me clean up the code and put it into a function.
Have a happy Thanksgiving and a good weekend!