I have done this over and over again as I add new hosts to by cluster. I posted about it on this:
https://communities.vmware.com/thread/249300
But the answer is here provided that you are using a vswitch:
I wanted to post my resolution for the issue. In simplest of terms. ESXi 4 has no way of automatically setting itself to "Route based on IP Hash" and must be configured manually beforehand if your switch is already configured for it.
This was my issue, I was not able to connect to the network using EtherChannel because the hash algorithms were not the same. The switches were set to IP SRC and the ESXi box default is set to 'Originating v port id'.
After initially setting up all the IP config and getting all the nics on the port channel activated from the ESXi management interface, I then proceeded to the unsupported cli. There I logged on to the box and applied the following commands.
vim-cmd hostsvc/net/vswitch_setpolicy –nicteaming-policy=loadbalance_ip vSwitch0
and
vim-cmd hostsvc/net/portgroup_set –nicteaming-policy=loadbalance_ip vSwitch0 ‘Management Network’
and for good measure
vim-cmd hostsvc/net/refresh
For some reason, as stated by s1xth, the vSwitch settings do not propagate to the default 'Management Network' port group. Therefore the setting of the nic policy for the port group was required.
As soon as I did that, everything started communicating. Then I preceded to do it 3 more times for my other ESXi 4 servers. and it all worked and got my DR documentation down pat.
Hope this will help someone in the future!.
Thanks,
Larry B.