Migrate ESXi VMkernel Port Group To A vSphere Standard Switch

One thing I don’t do very often is to move an ESXi VMkernel port group from a vDistributed Switch (vDS/VDS) to a vSphere Standard Switch/Virtual Standard Switch (VSS). It’s usually the other way around, right?

So when I had that question last week I had to look it up in the UI and this is how you do it.

1. Find and click/highlight/mark your ESXi host in the “Hosts & Clusters View”
2. Click Configure
3. Click Virtual Switches
4. Mark the virtual switch you want to migrate the VMkernel port to, click the three dots … & select “Migrate VMkernel Adapter”
   The three dots is the key here 🙂
   
5. Mark the VMkernel adapter you want to migrate, in my case vmk0 and click NEXT.
   
6. Give the port group on the VSS a name, in my case ESXimgmt, provide a VLAN ID, in my case 35, if needed, and click NEXT.
   
7. Verify everything looks good and click FINISH.
   
8. Optional but usually a good thing to verify the end result by making sure the VMkernel port group was migrated to the VSS port group you wanted to create, in my case ESXimgmt.
   

Yeah this is a very simple taks but most likely not something you do on a regular basis. ESXi version 6.7 build 11675023 was used by the ESXi hosts.