ESXi VMkernel Port “Management traffic” Checkbox

Here is the screenshot of the services that can be enabled on an ESXi v.6 VMkernel NIC port.

All these services look very self-explanatory, until I am doing some research on the ESXi management redudancy and discovering this post.

Here is the quick summary of the post, plus others I learned about the VMkernel port.

• The “Management traffic” checkbox does nothing but enabling that VMkernel NIC for HA hearbeat traffic.
• It has nothing to deal with the management of the ESXi host. When the checkbox is not checked, you still can manage the ESXi host via vCenter Server or SSH to the ESXi host via the IP address associated with the VMkernel port.
• Why isn’t there a checkbox for iSCSI or NFS traffic?
• Answer: any VMkernel port can talk to iSCSI or NFS storage. There is no need to enable the service.
• Prior to vSphere 6, only one default gateway is defined for the ESXi host in the GUI (ESXi 5.5 allows to add additional TCP/IP stack, including default gateway & DNS, in CLI). All VMkernel ports use the same default gateway for the traffic that is not local to each VMkernel port subnet.
• Here is the sceenshot in vSphere 5.5, only one Default TCP/IP stack

• Here is the screenshot in vSphere 6, three TCP/IP stacks by default. Each can have different deffault gateway. Additional custom TCP/IP stack still needs to be created by CLI.