Upgrade to 3.5 and VMotion dying

[khughes]

I've been slowly upgrading our 3.0.2 hosts to 3.5 and something wierd happens. When we tried to vmotion from a 3.0.2 box to a newly made 3.5 box the operation times out. The configuration is exactly identical so put those thoughts to rest. I've been on the line with vmware support the past 2 days because its happened both times we upgraded our hosts. Today on the call we discovered a big piece of the reason why we couldn't vmotion:

esx1 (3.0.2)

esx2 (3.5u2)

esx3 (newly created 3.5u2)

We couldn't vmotion from esx1 to esx3. we could vmotion from esx1 to esx2. we could not vmkping from esx1 to esx3 vmotion ip address. we could vmkping from esx3 to esx3 vmotion ip and esx1 vmotion ip. we could also vmkping from esx2 to esx3 vmotion ip. then after that esx2 to esx3 vmkping we could then vmkping from esx1 to esx3 vmotion ip and then the vmotion started working again.

What makes it wierd at least for today, is that I was able to vmotion 2 VM's to esx3 before it stopped working.

Obviously this is a networking issue, the tech said something about the arp table but that is for name to ip address i thought. but when you ping an ip address directly i didn't think it used the arp table.

The tech thought it was pretty wacky and couldnt' explain it too much and neither can I... any thoughts? I guess tomorrow when I go to upgrade another host, I'll vmkping from all the other hosts to make sure the link is up then go about vmotioning them around.

• Kyle

[khughes]

So I updated my 3rd host today, and again I ran into the same problem, but at least I knew how to fix it. When I brought my latest ESX 3.5U2 host online, I could vmkping to its vmotion IP from all the other 3.5 hosts, but not from the last 3.0.2 host. Once I pinged the 3.0.2 host/vmotion ip from the newly built out 3.5 host, then everything seemed to linke up. Then I could vmkping from the 3.0.2 host to the new 3.5 host.

To me that's extremely strange, starting to think it might be isolated to just that 3.0.2 box....

• Kyle

[TomHowarth]

When you upgraded did you change anything, and did you do a reboot. not trying to teach you to scuk eggs grandma, just checking process

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Tom Howarth

VMware Communities User Moderator

[khughes]

The only thing that I changed with the fresh install of 3.5, was that I changed hard drive partitions, added new partitions, extended others etc.. no networking changes were made. I did reboot, I also installed the security updates up until 10/3/08. I rebooted after finishing the install of the updates.

• Kyle

[TomHowarth · Accepted solution]

what version of VC are you running?

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Tom Howarth

VMware Communities User Moderator

[khughes]

what version of VC are you running?

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Tom Howarth

VMware Communities User Moderator

2.5U3

• Kyle