ESXi Host loses a LAN card - vmotion possible ?

[ChrisI88]

We had a ESXi Host lose a LAN card and the VM's that use that network didn't vmotion to another host.   It is possible for this to occur or is that one limitation for HA?

[daphnissov]

That isn't how vMotion works. It's not reactive to host component failures such as loss of a vmnic.

[asajm]

Hi

Can you share error

[sjesse]

HA doesn't vmotion , it starts a new instance on another host. Is this the only network card on the host, or did you have another one. If the vms traffic is only on the network card that vailed, and the esxi host management traffic is on another one HA won't kick in. Vcenter needs to this the entire host is down unexpecteded.

[ChrisI88]

The NIC (10G fiber) had a error which caused it to stop working.

After a reboot of the host it was fine.   But I couldn't remember if there was some mechanism to enable vmotion for a VM on a LAN communication failure.

Seems like there should be.  Using Distributed switches as well.

Thanks for the responses.

[daphnissov]

There is vSphere Proactive HA which requires an external provider (not free from all server vendors; not all vendors support this) which has the capabilities to perform actions like this. However it still assumes you have some functional pNIC(s) which have a vmkernel port tagged for vMotion still alive and which can communicate with other hosts in the cluster.