Changing your vSwitch Names on ESXi Hosts

So, yesterday I thought to myself, hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we could change the names of the vSwitches on ESXi hosts. That way, it will quickly allow any one to see the different categories of switches – e.g. storage/management etc.

Turns out, this is possible. Thanks to a little bit of “hacking”, you can change the names of your vSwitches.

 

In order to do this, you need to edit the esx.conf file. Using winSCP (or whichever tool you prefer to use – even ssh could work), login to the host and browse to and edit:

/etc/vmware/esx.conf

Find the line(s):

/net/vswitch/child[0000]/name = "vSwitch0"

Edit this to display whatever you would prefer- e.g.

/net/vswitch/child[0000]/name = "vSwitch0_Management_Networks"

Depending on the amount of vSwitches you have, the child[0000] will increment. So be sure to change those if you want.