If VMware VirtualCenter manages the virtual machines on your VMware Server hosts, you must create labels for each virtual network adapter. VirtualCenter uses labels to identify which virtual network adapter is associated with which physical network.
Each virtual network adapter needs a label:
Note: If you configure virtual machines from the VirtualCenter server, you cannot take advantage of VMware Server features like snapshots.
If the adapter has no label, VirtualCenter cannot recognize the adapter. If a virtual machine is configured for a network name that does not exist, the virtual network adapter is disconnected when you power on the virtual machine.
You can create labels for the existing default virtual network adapters like VMnet0, the default bridged network adapter, or VMnet8, the default NAT adapter. You configure the adapters in VMware Server. You can configure new adapters with bridged, host-only, NAT or custom networking. The type of networking configuration is irrelevant to VirtualCenter. VirtualCenter is concerned with the network label only.
Note: If you intend to create and manage all your virtual machines on the VirtualCenter server, you should assign unique labels to each host-only adapter on a VMware Server host. This way, you can easily identify on which host each host-only network resides. However, if you have a VMware Server host where all the virtual machines use host-only networking, you could decide to not give the host-only adapter a network label.
For information on configuring new virtual network adapters, see Configuring a Network Adapter on page 9.
After your virtual network adapters are configured, create labels for each adapter so VirtualCenter can correctly manage the virtual machines on the host.
To create network labels for virtual machines managed by VirtualCenter, complete the following steps in a console.
Note: If the Network Labels tab does not appear in the Host Settings dialog box, the VMware Server host has not been discovered by VirtualCenter. For information on adding a VMware Server host to VirtualCenter, see your VirtualCenter documentation.
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