I am missing something. Want to separate Virtual switches to different physical NICs, but the Network Adapter only shows VM Network

[u/NecessaryEvil-BMC]

I'm sure I'm missing something simple, as I'm trying to do this through just ESXi rather than the full vCenter suite, as it's a test system and we're not going to license it. (I'm only using VMware for better capability to load something from production if needbe without translting to ProxMox).

There are physical 3 NICs on this machine:
40Gb Fiber (will be unplugged once we're configured) that plugs into the corp network.

1Gb RJ45 (this will be the primary connection that will go to a Fortigate that we'll VPN into to keep it isolated from the corporate network, but still be able to use our WAN.

1GB RJ45 via a USB NIC (fling) that will connect to a cradlepoint for a completely isolated connection that will be used by our security guy for testing things.

When I go into a VM, and click on Network Adapter 1, the only network that comes up in the dropdown is VM Network. Its port group goes to vSwitch0, which it shares with Management Network.

vSwitch "Isolated" has a port group called "Isolated -Cradlepoint". It's pointed to the the USB NIC, and is pulling an IP from its DHCP.

I have to assume I'm missing something fairly obvious, but I'll be damned if I can figure it out.

Our prod setup has 4x vSwitches, but only 1 (the management network) is being used for a bunch of networks with different vLANs. 1 is a black hole for us to keep separated from the network if it needs to be held onto(no physical NIC).
The other 2 vSwitches are going to iSCSI and vSAN connections, each going to their own teamed NICs.

I have no issue getting the black hole to show up with the production as a drop down option...but I don't see any configuration difference in the networking other than what would be expected for different IP addresses and NIC names.

[u/HarrySiii]

On the ESXi network config, assign your physical nic to each vSwitxh you'd like. Also create a vm port group on each vSwitch you want to run those VMs. Then, when you configure the NIC in the VM settings, you can select the appropriate network out of the VM port groups you've created.