dvSwitch available ports

In the mastering Vsphere5 book by Lowe there is a paragraph describing the total and available ports on a dvSwitch. Book says a dvSwitch with 2 hosts would have 128 available ports. When adding a 5.0 or 5.1 dvSwitch in Vcenter and getting to the screen to choose which hosts to add to the switch there is a view settings link which when opened says 'max number of ports designated on this host', defaults to 256, what is this 256 as compared to the 128 he comes up with? He indicates no matter how many hosts you add to a dvswitch you will always only have 128 available ports.

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jibbajabba

Which page is that ?

Mikdilly

jibbajabba wrote: »

Which page is that ?

Not sure, using an ereader, doesn't give page numbers, it's in Chapter 5, right after procedures to add a dvSwitch and add another ESXi host to it. Paragraph is titled 'dvSwitch Total Ports and Available Ports'.

jibbajabba

Mikdilly wrote: »

Not sure, using an ereader, doesn't give page numbers, it's in Chapter 5, right after procedures to add a dvSwitch and add another ESXi host to it. Paragraph is titled 'dvSwitch Total Ports and Available Ports'.

Ok, got it - I did some digging and the amount of available ports is indeed by default 128

I am not sure where you got the 256 from to be honest ? Have you changed the defaults ?

Mikdilly

jibbajabba wrote: »

I am not sure where you got the 256 from to be honest ? Have you changed the defaults ?

The part i don't get is when adding a 5.0 or 5.1 dvSwitch in Vcenter and getting to the screen to choose which hosts to add to the switch there is a view settings link which when opened says 'max number of ports designated on this host', defaults to 256.

If any host added to a dvSwitch is limited to 128 ports, why does setting 'max number of ports designated on this host' allow a number greater than 128?

jibbajabba

It is not limited to 128 ports - it is the default - maximum ports is 4096

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere5/r51/vsphere-51-configuration-maximums.pdf

Which makes me wonder if someone simply changed the default - I just killed of my vSphere 5 lab as I need 4.1 so I cannot check right now