I have recently set up an ESXi server and have a windows 2003 server virtual machine set up. On the ESXi server I have install a quad ethernet card and it's working just fine.
On the ESXi side I created two virtual switches and assigned an ethernet port to each one from the 4 port ethernet card.
On the virtual machine side I edited the existing ethernet port with one of the new virtual switchs and then I added another network interface for the 2nd interface with the other virtual switch.
All is working well, but I am wondering if their is a better way. This isn't the most scalable solution. I can probably only get about 4 virtual machines. I was trying to use the main virtual switch where the ESXi management port is defined but it didn't work to well.
Also, the reason for multiple Ethernet interfaces is that the virtual machine needs to connect to a lab environment to run certain apps. You RDC into the main interface and then you can configure the 2nd interface to connect to the lab environment. I have also tested this with installing multiple virtual machines on VMWare workstation but I wanted to try ESXi where I don't have the overhead of windows to run vmware. Actually this is a much better solution because the virtual machine has it's own interface and they can configure a default route. On the virtual machine on ESXi you can only have 1 default gateway for windows and you have to add routes...
I still need to research it but I am not ready to move to the VDI yet and my feeling is that I would have to basically do the same setup with a VDI infrastructure.
EDIT: Actually I was able to move the virtual machine under the main virtual switch. This is the interface that I RDC to. But the problem is no matter what the interfaces on the virtual machine show up as 10 meg / half duplex interfaces and not 100 / full.
