ESXI single vSwitch with 2 physical NICS

So I have read other question related to this and they do not help. Basically I have a network/vSwitch setup with a bunch of VMs. There are 2 NICS, each with a physical computer connected to them. For illustration NIC3 has computer A, and NIC6 has computer B. When NIC 3 is connected I can ping computer A from all VMs on the network. When NIC 6 is connected I can ping computer B from all VMs. But when both are connected I can only ping 1 computer, never both. I am trying to figure out how to connect 2 physically external computers to the same internal network/vSwitch. Thank you.

Solution 1:

You can't do that in ESXi.

You can connect two or more physical NICs to a virtual switch, but then they will get automatically load balanced, thus they need to actually be connected to the same network; you can't connect them to two different unrelated networks (or single hosts).

Edit: I'm referring to the physical network outside the ESXi host (a host normally gets connected to a physical switch, not directly to other computers). You create a virtual switch, then you connect it to a physical switch using one or more physical NICs in the host.

But if you use more than one NIC, they need to go to the same destination; you can't connect them to two unrelated physical switches. And this also means you can't connect them to two different physical computers.

This works:

-----Host------       --Switch--
|             |       |        |
|  -vSwitch-- |       |        |
|  |        | |       |        |
|  |   VM   | |       |        |
|  |        | |       |        |
|  |   VM   |-NIC------        |
|  |        | |       |        |
|  |   VM   | |       |        |
|  |        | |       |        |
|  ---------- |       |        |
|             |       |        |
---------------       ----------

This also works (with load balancing and failover on the physical connections):

-----Host------       --Switch--
|             |       |        |
|  -vSwitch-- |       |        |
|  |        | |       |        |
|  |   VM   |-NIC------        |
|  |        | |       |        |
|  |   VM   | |       |        |
|  |        | |       |        |
|  |   VM   |-NIC------        |
|  |        | |       |        |
|  ---------- |       |        |
|             |       |        |
---------------       ----------

This doesn't work:

-----Host------       --Switch1--
|             |       |         |
|  -vSwitch-- |       |         |
|  |        |-NIC------         |
|  |   VM   | |       |         |
|  |        | |       -----------
|  |   VM   | |                  
|  |        | |       --Switch2--
|  |   VM   | |       |         |
|  |        |-NIC------         |
|  ---------- |       |         |
|             |       |         |
---------------       -----------