Changing the Service Console IP address in VMWare ESX Server

Hi folks, have you ever setup ESX server and set the IP just to find out later that it’s taken and you have to change it? I have, and I have to say I hate it when that happens.

Luckily there is an easy way to resolve this. With the proper command line commands you can quickly change the IP address of the service console.

Just connect to the console of the ESX server and at the shell prompt type in: esxcfg-vswif -d vswif0

This deletes the existing vswif0 and it will give you a message about “nothing to flush”. You can safely ignore this.

Then type in: esxcfg-vswif -a vswif0 -p Service\ Console -i 192.168.1.5 255.255.255.0 -b 192.168.1.255

That will recreate the vswif0 with the IP 192.168.1.5. You can of course use whatever IP and subnet mask you wish. The last address is the broadcast address.

If you have changed the IP of the service console to a new subnet then you will also have to change the default gateway. You can edit the file “network” in the directory /etc/sysconfig. Just use the vi editor to update the file and save it.

After all of this is done, restart the entire ESX server and that should fix it.

-RP