First, you must create the vSwitch and change the MTU to 9000. For this example, vSwitch9 will be the name you would replace with your own.
esxcfg-vswitch -a vSwitch9
Then, set the MTU of the vSwitch.
esxcfg-vswitch -m 9000 vSwitch9
esxcfg-vswitch -l will list all the vSwitches so you can confirm your changes and settings.
Switch Name Num Ports Used Ports Configured Ports MTU Uplinks
vSwitch9 64 1 64 9000
As you can see, the Uplinks field is blank, so you must add a physical NIC to the virtual switch, but first we’ll do a few other things. iSCSI access is controlled by a VMkernel interface and assigned to a port group on the vSwitch.
To create the portgroup:
esxcfg-vswitch -A vSwitch9
Then create the VMkernel interface:
esxcfg-vmknic -a -i -n -m 9000
If you named the port group “iSCSI” and your IP is 172.16.0.1/24, the command would like this:
esxcfg-vmknic -a -i 172.16.0.1 -n 255.255.255.0 -m 9000 iSCSI
esxcfg-vmknic -l will confirm your settings.
The last step is to add a physical NIC to the vSwitch. This can be done via the GUI, but we are having fun here, so let’s do it with commands.
esxcfg-vswitch -L vSwitch9
You’re done! You can now refresh the Networking portion of the Configuration tab in the vSphere Client to see the new virtual switch components. Keep in mind that you must enable jumbo frames on your physical switch for this to work.