Restore of a Virtual Machine Connected to Cisco Nexus 1000V Virtual Switch does not have NIC (4046110)

After restoring a VM that was originally connected to a Cisco Nexus 1000V Virtual Switch, the VM has no NIC and no network settings.

During the setup of the restore job the network selection drop-down list is unpopulated. Because the job is configured with no network configuration, there is no NIC in the VM. The NIC and the NIC configuration have to be added after the restore is complete.

Because the Nexus 1000V is not a regular VMware distributed virtual switch or vSwitch, vRanger has no visibility into the network configuration of the Nexus switch, so the network drop-down does not show the Nexus networks.

Create a dummy standard Virtual Machine Network vswitch on the host to which you will be restoring. No other machines or uplinks need to connect to this network; it simply has to exist. This dummy network will then show up in the network drop down list when you restore the VM. Select this network when configuring your restore job. After the restore is complete, the NIC and its settings will exist on the restored VM. You can then use the vSphere client to connect the NIC to the correct network on the Nexus switch.