Differentiate between Virtual Machine Port Group and VMKernal Port?

Differentiate between Virtual Machine Port Group and VMKernal Port?


VMkernel ports 

VMkernel ports are used to connect the VMkernel to services that it controls. There can be many vmkernel ports however there is only one vmkernel.
Hence the vmkernel ports can be differentiated based on the service it connects the vmkernel to.
The services might be vmotion,SCSI binding,Management of the ESXi or Fault tolerant. With vSphere 5.5 there is addition of this for vSAN Network.

VM port Groups

VM port Groups on the other hand are used only to connect Virtual machines to Virtual Switches.
Primarily these can be layer 2 Switches which only need a tagging such as vLAN tagging to make sure that the Virtual machines communicate in between themselves,communicate in between the hosts,communicate to the internet etc.
With VM Port groups, you can have policies such as Security,Traffic Shaping,NIC Teaming etc.


VmKernel port group provides connectivity to hosts and handles the traffic like vMotion , management, FT traffic. We assign IP address to Virtual kernel Adapter (VMK) of VMKernel port group. Whereas all Virtual machines are connected at VM port group.

Security	Set MAC address changes, forged transmits, and promiscuous mode for the selected port groups.
Traffic Shaping	Set the average bandwidth, peak bandwidth, and burst size for inbound and outband traffic on the selected port groups.
VLAN	Configure how the selected port groups connect to physical VLANs.
Teaming and Failover	Set load balancing, failover detection, switch notification, and failover order for the selected port groups.
Resource Allocation	Set network resource pool association for the selected port groups. This option is available for vSphere distributed switch versions 5.0.0 and later only.
Monitoring	Enable or disable NetFlow on the selected port groups. This option is available for vSphere distributed switch versions 5.0.0 and later only.
Miscellaneous	Enable or disable port blocking on the selected port groups.

What is vnic, vmnic and vmk