Much like vNIC is a network interface for a virtual machine, a VMkernel interface acts as a network interface for VMkernel. The very first VMkernel interface—vmk0 is created during the installation of ESXi. This interface is the management interface for the ESXi host. VMware allows you to create a maximum of 256 (vmk0—vmk255) VMkernel interfaces on an ESXi host. ESXi uses VMkernel interfaces for management traffic, VMotion traffic, FT traffic, virtual SAN traffic, iSCSI, and NAS interfaces. Since each interface acts as a network node point, it will need an IP configuration and a MAC address. The first VMkernel interface (vmk0) will procure the MAC address of the physical NIC it is connected to. The remaining interfaces pick up the VMware OUI MAC address generated by the ESXi host. In this section, we will learn how to create VMkernel interfaces.