connect vSphere 8 ESXi VMs to different Cisco CML topologies ?

[SJNIII]

We have several engineers using ESXi 8 and have VMs that they need to connect to their CML topologies.

I was looking at our current Cisco CML Enterprise controller and tried to and a new interface (vnic) of one of the VMs to the CML Controller, but we now exceed the 10-device limit for a VM.   And to confirm, I looked at the CML Controller VM settings and see there are 10 virtual nics thus the error is thrown when trying to add a new vnic.

I can delete 1 or 2 of the vnics from the CML Controller, but that will only free up 2 to add to the controller and we need to allow at least 5 user VMs to connect to their CML topologies

Is there a way to set up a bridge in the CML Controller to allow 5 users to connect to their own lab topologies?

[Torbjørn]

You can use dot1q/trunking to achieve this using a single NIC. You can read more about this here: https://developer.cisco.com/docs/modeling-labs/external-connectivity-with-trunking/

[SJNIII]

I saw another video on Trunking - https://youtu.be/G0oB_uxRVcQ

I am not sure we can follow either as we do not have access to the physical switch.

We are limited to vSwitch's with no uplinks, but we may be able to request a physical port be activated and we then could possibly do the setup

If we do not have a physical uplink to the switch (sandbox), can this be setup with the 5 User VMs that need to connect to their topologies in CML?  Below is a sandbox for the 5 VMs..