

VM port groups are a way that we can create logical rules around the virtual ports that are made available to VMs. VMkernel ports have important jobs to do and are vital for making sure that the vSphere host can be useful to the VMs. Although a VM can talk to a VMkernel port, they do not consume them directly. The goal of a VMkernel port is to provide some sort of Layer 2 or Layer 3 services to the vSphere host. A VMkernel port consists of a port on the virtual switch and a VMkernel interface.Īlso, what is the VMkernel port used for? You must create new VMkernel ports for your ESX/ ESXi system if you plan on using VMotion, VMware FT, or iSCSI and NAS storage. One may also ask, what is the function of VMkernel ports on a virtual switch? VMkernel network interfaces provide the network access for the VMkernel TCP/IP stack. It is responsible to allocate all available resources of ESXi host to VMs such as memory, CPU, storage etc. VMkernel is a virtualization interface between a Virtual Machine and the ESXi host which stores VMs.

Likewise, people ask, what is VMkernel and why it is important?

VMware calls VMkernel a microkernel because it runs on bare metal, directly on VMware ESX hosts. The VMkernel is the liaison between virtual machines (VMs) and the physical hardware that supports them.

VMkernel is a POSIX-like operating system developed by VMware.
