DHCP LOOKUP FAILED - ESXI HAS BEEN WORKING FOR A PERIOD OF 6 MONTHS

[bighead81]

My home server has been working for a period of 6 months but now its giving http://0.0.0.0.0 and eventually a DHCP lookup failed http://169.254.210.X.  When I first installed ESXI I had to inject drivers into the software to get this working and its been working fine since then.  The weird thing is the home server has been off for a week and when I turned it on I get the above.

The troubleshooting steps I have taken -

From the EXSI I cannot ping to anywhere.  The next hop (Cisco switch) or an outside address. Also happens when I manually assign an ip address.

I have mirrored the next hop port (CIsco switch) and wireshark shows a DHCP request but then fails as IP address is not assigned.  When I manually assign ip address 192.168.0.50 exactly the same happen I still get 0.0.0.0 address seen in Wireshark and this continues and continues. So data is being received to the next hop.

All other devices which are connected to the switch are working fine and NIC is detected within ESXI.

I have ordered an Intel pro nic but worried all of my configuration within esxi may have been lost if I need to do a complete fresh install. I find this very strange as no changes where made to esxi or switch. My internet connection did drop for a day but I think that is just a coincidence. Any helpful tips or direction to resolve this issue is greatly appreciated.

[Alistar]

Hello there,

the old NIC might have died on you - this is what sometimes happens when you do a reboot or a power cycle - the faulty hardware then refuses to initialize. Do not worry about your configuration - you can backup & restore it like in this article :VMware KB: Locally restoring an ESXi configuration from state.tgz backup

Good luck!

[bighead81]

Thanks for the quick response.  If next hop is receiving packets which i can see on the switch port in wireshark how could the on board NIC port have of failed. Surely I would see no packets at all. ESXI is also still detecting the NIC.  Hardware failure was my first response as no changes were made but troubleshoot give the impression maybe not. 

The backup doc has put me at ease.

[Alistar]

Hardware has many ways of failing - this one might seem to be a little bit more "subtle". Either this or the driver/firnware went crazy and a new flash/driver update would help. Can you check out if any new drivers/firmware updates are applicable to your NIC?

[bighead81]

Ill wait for the new NIC to arrive. Then hopefully that will resolve DHCP.  I will then back up all esxi config, vm data and do a fresh install.  Will let you know how it goes.  Again thanks.

[Alistar]

Fingers crossed. Good luck!

[bighead81]

Ok ive received the new nic and same show.  Still not being assigned an auto address and not able to ping next hop switch or default gateway but WAP and desktop work fine. When I bypass switch and firewall and connect directly to router it works.  My config has not changed in the 6 months since the ESXI has been working.

I have copy and paste the config in case im missing something...

Cisco Switch

#sh run

Interface fast 0/1

description desktop

switchport access vlan 100

switchport mode access

interface fast 0/2

description switch

switchport access vlan 100

switchport mode access

ip default gateway 192.168.0.X

ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 192.168.0.254

#sh ip route

c 192.168.0.0/24 is directly connected, Vlan1

S* 0.0.0.0/0 [1/0] 192.168.0.254

The routes for ESXI -

192.168.0.0      255.255.255.0      local subnet      vmk0

default               0.0.0.0                   gateway          vmk0

[Alistar]

Alright then I was wrong on this - hope the new NIC didn't hurt your wallet that much

Either way if it points out to a switch acting up, have you tried all the different ports? Also have you tried putting the port to trunk mode and presenting VLANs on per-item basis? Are you using VLAN100 for all your VMKernel ports? What about clearing the configuration and just running with a "vanilla" config while removing all the VLANs?

Just trying to think of all different angles that could be of some use here.

[RegularJoe07]

I'm having the same issue... were you ever able to resolve the problem??

I'm thinking I'm going to have to reinstall ESXi...

Thanks!