Network counters at the ESXi level

vCenter provides three additional counters at the host level. It can track packet receive errors, packet transmit errors, and unknown protocol frames. The counters are provided at either the host or vmnic level. They are not provided at the switch or port group levels.

This means you cannot gauge the performance at the port group or switch levels easily using vCenter:

ESXi network counters

Just like vCenter, vRealize Operations also does not provide counters at the standard switch or port group level. This means you cannot aggregate or analyze the data from these network objects' points of view. This is one reason why you should use Distributed Switch. It simply has a much richer monitoring capability.

Usage, Data Received Rate, and Data Transmit Rate are all available at the host level and at the individual NIC level. For readability, only vmnic3 and the host are shown in this screenshot:

ESXi network metrics in vCenter

You should expect the values for...