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ScottChapman
Contributor
Contributor

Support for multi-port NICs?

I finally got my Intel gigabit ET dual-port NIC to be recognized by ESXi. But I have an odd problem...

lspci -p shows both NICs:

~ # lspci -p

Bus:Sl.F Vend:Dvid Subv:Subd ISA/irq/Vec P M Module Name

01:00.00 8086:10c9 8086:a03c 10/ 10/0x71 A V igb vmnic1

01:00.01 8086:10c9 8086:a03c 0/ / B V vmnic2

It appears that the VI Client only sees vmnic1 and no vmnic2.

I have noticed that the two ports appear to behave differently. Specifically, when the machine boots, one port looks live and active, the other has lights which do go one, but they do not behave the same way.

I didn't notice any BIOS for the card, is there some other magic I need to be aware of?

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12 Replies
nick_couchman
Immortal
Immortal

Since you're on the console, could you do an esxcfg-nics -l and see what the output is?

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ScottChapman
Contributor
Contributor

Name PCI Driver Link Speed Duplex MTU Description

vmnic0 03:00.00 tg3 Down 0Mbps Half 1500 Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5751 Gigabit Ethernet

vmnic1 01:00.00 igb Up 1000Mbps Full 1500 Intel Corporation Intel(R) Gigabit ET DUal Port Server Adapter

This is correct, I only have the one port on the dual-port card connected. But I don't understand why both ports are not showing up as separate NICs. In otherwords there should be a vmnic2

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nick_couchman
Immortal
Immortal

Interesting...when you go into the Configuration tab and the Networking section, is there any indication that this single NIC has two ports?

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ScottChapman
Contributor
Contributor

None.

I was expecting two NICs to show up and I see some evidence that ESXi tried to do that; see my first post you see nic1 and nic2

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Dave_Mishchenko
Immortal
Immortal

You might want to try an install of ESX. It may be that the driver is not quite 100% yet.

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ScottChapman
Contributor
Contributor

Not an option for me.

When I looked at the driver, I did see that it supports other similar multi-port cards.

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Sanjana
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Scott,

Is there a firmware update available that you could probably try on the dual-port nic?

--sanjana

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ScottChapman
Contributor
Contributor

Gotta be the driver; I moved the card to my windows vista machine, and it showed up as two separate NICs that both worked like a champ.

now what??

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Sanjana
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

>Gotta be the driver;

Not necessarily.

Drivers do assume the presence of a certain version of firmware (They ultimately talk to the firmware). Not sure if the nics you're using fall in that category, but in your case, the firmware version on the nics could be the one that is compatible with the Windows driver.

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ScottChapman
Contributor
Contributor

The other interesting behavior I noticed is that when the machine posts (as it is booting to the BIOS, and before it starts booting ESXi) that one of the ports shows good lights (orange and green) and the other doesn't (just the green one is one).

The orangs indicates that it negotiated gigabit, and the green one is network activity.

So this tells me that the second NIC on the card is not starting up for some reason on that machine.

Seems like I owe Intel a call...

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Sanjana
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

>Seems like I owe Intel a call...

It'll be great if you could also update the thread with what you hear from them Smiley Happy

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ScottChapman
Contributor
Contributor

Spent about an hour with them on the phone, didn't get to any concrete conclusions.

The theory is that the PCI Express slot of that mother moard (intel 915 chipset) isn't supplying enough power. I am skeptical since that slot was driving a graphics card which must draw more.

At anyrate I am convinced it is some incompatibility between the motherboard and the NIC.

I am just going to ignore it for now and plan to replace the old motherboard this summer...

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