There is one more tool I want to talk about and which is cool. The author is Flores Eken from ITQ Consultancy in the Netherlands is an enthusiast VMware SDK programmer. He wrote this application in C# based on the new ESX3.x /VC2.x SDK, but it works in ESX 4 I tested it. This tool cames from run-virtual.com too as 3 other free tools I blogged about recently.
This handy application allows you to easily setup all portgroups and VLan IDs on all your ESX Servers. Since most of the time when you'll deploy VI you will have to configure the standard vSwitches and not the vDS (Distributed Switches), because vDS is only available in the Entreprise Plus version..
The idea is that first you read out (use the export feature) the network settings of a single ESX Host and with this information you setup all your other servers you want to.
Download ITQ VLan and Portgroup Manager
For more info about the program or about ITQ, contact Paul Geerlings ([email protected])