The following figure shows what your typical vDS should look like. We have a vCenter server where it is all a configured management plane. Completely create all VMkernel ports and VM port group. Very often it is a problem to understand what is uplink and what is vmnic. You must map vmnic to vDS uplink. Designation of vmnic starts from 0 and designation uplink starts from 1. The total typical example is vmnic0 is mapped to Uplink1:

Examples of vSS and vDS in the real world are as follows:

We can use CLI, which is very old but still good, esxcfg-vswitch –l; this CLI shows you both a virtual switch vSS and vDS, with a lot of information:

[root@esxi1:~] esxcfg-vswitch -l
Switch Name      Num Ports   Used Ports  Configured Ports  MTU     Uplinks
vSwitch0         4352        10          128               1500    vmnic0
  PortGroup Name        VLAN ID  Used Ports  Uplinks
  VM Network            0        6           vmnic0
  Management Network    0        1           vmnic0
Switch Name      Num Ports   Used Ports  Configured Ports  MTU     Uplinks
vSwitch1         4352        4           128               1500   vmnic1
  PortGroup Name        VLAN ID  Used Ports  Uplinks  
IPSstorage            0        1           vmnic1
Switch Name      Num Ports   Used Ports  Configured Ports  MTU    Uplinks
vmservice-vswitch  4352        2           16                1500
  PortGroup Name        VLAN ID  Used Ports  Uplinks
  vmservice-vshield-pg  0        0
  vmservice-vmknic-pg   0        1
Switch Name      Num Ports   Used Ports  Configured Ports  MTU    Uplinks
vSwitch2         4352        1           128               1500
  PortGroup Name        VLAN ID  Used Ports  Uplinks
  Space                 0        0
DVS Name         Num Ports   Used Ports  Configured Ports  MTU    Uplinks
DSwitch-SDN10GB  4352        18          512               9000    vmnic5,vmnic4
  DVPort ID           In Use      Client
  8                   0
  9                   0
  12                  1           vmnic4
  13                  1           vmnic5
  124                 1           vmk2
  168                 1           App02.eth0
  172                 1           DB01.eth0
  164                 1           App01.eth0
  212                 1           desktop-ubuntu.eth0
  180                 1           Web01.eth0
  196                 1           edge-3-jobdata-155792-0.eth0
  135                 1           edge-3-jobdata-155792-0.eth1
  136                 1           edge-4-jobdata-155794-0.eth0
  137                 1           edge-4-jobdata-155794-1.eth0

The CLI that helps you audit your configuration is esxcli. This is used for both vSS and vDS. Consider the following two examples of esxli:

• First, list all vSS on a host using the following command:

[root@esx1:] esxcli network vswitch standard list
vSwitch0
Name: vSwitch0
Class: etherswitch
Num Ports: 5632
Used Ports: 1
Configured Ports: 128
MTU: 1500
CDP Status: listen
Beacon Enabled: false
Beacon Interval: 1
Beacon Threshold: 3
Beacon Required By: 
Uplinks: 
Portgroups: VM Network, EXTERN
vSwitch1
Name: vSwitch1
Class: etherswitch
Num Ports: 5632
Used Ports: 1
Configured Ports: 128
MTU: 1500
CDP Status: listen
Beacon Enabled: false
Beacon Interval: 1
Beacon Threshold: 3
Beacon Required By: 
Uplinks: 
Portgroups: MGMT2, MGMT, iSCSI, Prod1, Prod2, vMotion

• Second, list all information about vDS configuration on a host using the following command:

[root@esx1:~] esxcli network vswitch dvs vmware list
DELL_VDC
Name: DELL_VDC
VDS ID: 50 2c 86 06 eb 30 e4 04-95 d9 d7 d0 70 a8 d1 72
Class: etherswitch
Num Ports: 5632
Used Ports: 1
Configured Ports: 512
MTU: 9000
CDP Status: both
Beacon Timeout: -1
Uplinks: 
VMware Branded: true
DVPort: 
      Client: 
      DVPortgroup ID: dvportgroup-18
      In Use: false
      Port ID: 3856
      Client: 
      DVPortgroup ID: dvportgroup-18
      In Use: false
      Port ID: 3857

For a lover of GUI, of course, it is very easy to show vSS and vDS in vSphere Web Client or new vSphere Client (HTML5 ).

In the following screenshot, the vSwitch0 is vSS, and after clicking on this object, you can check the VM port group and VMkernel ports:

The same configuration details are also available with the new HTML5 interface, using the vSphere Client. Basically, is the same information rearranged in a different way: