ESXi 6.7 U3 Receive Length errors

[JaapHoetmer]

While monitoring one of our hosts we noticed network interface errors. Checked cabling but no problems found. Checked NIC stats and the errors are 'receive length errors' only. Tried updating the BIOS and NIC driver, to no avail.

Stats of the NIC after rebooting, receive length errors are slowly increasing:

[root@rdcvms01:~] esxcli network nic stats get -n vmnic0

NIC statistics for vmnic0

   Packets received: 177327

   Packets sent: 494927

   Bytes received: 30356313

   Bytes sent: 662112740

   Receive packets dropped: 0

   Transmit packets dropped: 0

   Multicast packets received: 5267

   Broadcast packets received: 8459

   Multicast packets sent: 503

   Broadcast packets sent: 1274

   Total receive errors: 1877

  Receive length errors: 1877

   Receive over errors: 0

   Receive CRC errors: 0

   Receive frame errors: 0

   Receive FIFO errors: 0

   Receive missed errors: 0

   Total transmit errors: 0

   Transmit aborted errors: 0

   Transmit carrier errors: 0

   Transmit FIFO errors: 0

   Transmit heartbeat errors: 0

   Transmit window errors: 0

Host: Proliant ML350 Gen10, latest SPP

HPE Customized Image ESXi 6.7.0 Update 2 version 670.U2.10.4.1

Updated with ESXi 6.7 U3

Single NIC in use at present.

Updated Intel NIC driver to the latest version: Download VMware vSphere , no change in status, errors still increasing.

Switch is a HPE 1920s, no errors seen on any of the interfaces.

All interfaces and connections are set to standard MTU size (1500).

Anyone has seen this before?

P.s this person has the same issue, and hasn't found a solution either:

Receive Length Errors on Host NIC : vmware

Thanks for any tips!

[sjesse]

What type of storage are you using? Are you using nfs or iscsi? If so whats the mtu of the storage ips you use for the target ip or the nfs exports.

[JaapHoetmer]

HI sjesse, thanks for your reply.

Local disk storage only, it's a single machine with a couple of VMs, no networked storage.

Regards.

[JaapHoetmer]

Hi all,

Given the lack of further comments, I gather no one has seen this before or has a suggestion what to do about it?

Thanks, regards,

Jaap

[JaapHoetmer · Accepted solution]

Hi there.

For future reference, if anyone has a similar issue.

The problem arrived from the FortiGate firewall, onto which the STP (Spanning Tree) option was enabled on the internal interface. Once STP was disabled, the receive length errors stopped immediately.

I am unsure as to why the STP option was enabled in the first place, or why enabling STP caused these errors, but it has fixed the issue.

Kind regards,