Configuring the Virtual NICs

You can configure virtual NICs for your NIOS virtual appliance. NIOS requires a minimum of two interfaces to operate in a VM. You can configure settings for up to four discrete virtual interfaces. The four interfaces mirror the MGMT, LAN1, HA, and LAN2 port configurations for hardware NIOS appliances. All the network adapters must be of the same adapter type. The NIOS virtual instance performs best with the VMXNET 3 network adapter type, but also supports VMXNET 2 adapter type for backwards compatibility. To improve performance and reduce overhead, consider to migrate all the legacy VMXNET 2 network adapter type to VMXNET 3.

If you need to enable the LAN2 interface on the NIOS virtual appliance, you must attach the NIOS VM instance with four interfaces when deploying it.

1. From the vSphere Client, select the newly deployed NIOS virtual instance.

2. Click Inventory -> Virtual Machine -> Edit Settings.

3. In the Virtual Machine Properties dialog box, select the Hardware tab.

4. From the Hardware list, select one of the following based on the configuration of your NIOS virtual machine. For a NIOS virtual HA pair, you must configure both the LAN1 and HA ports for the virtual nodes. All of the network adapters must be turned on.
   Note: The virtual IP address becomes unreachable during failover, if the MAC Address Changes and Forged Transmits fields are disabled in the security setting of the virtual switch used in HA pairs. To avoid this scenario, you must set both the fields to Accept. By default, both the fields are set to Accept.

   • Network Adapter 1: MGMT

   • Network Adapter 2: LAN1

   • Network Adapter 3: HA

   • Network Adapter 4: LAN2

5. For each network adapter, select the network of the NIOS virtual instance from the Network Connection drop-down menu. The list includes all networks configured for virtual machines on the host as shown in the following figure:
   Virtual NIC Configuration
   

6. Click OK.