E1000 adapters cant communicate on network, but VMXNET3 can?

[unda]

I am in the process of creating a new vsphere environment with VCSA 5.5

My VCSA VM (using a VMXNET3 NIC) works fine, and communicates without issues.

My 08r2 VM with a E1000 NIC, can't. (doesn't get DHCP, cant ping when set static ip etc). When I add a VMXNET3 NIC onto the same machine, it immediately picks up DHCP, and can ping etc.

Whats going on? I cant just use the VMXNET3 NICs, as the 100+ VMs im going to be migrating to this environment are all set up with the E1000's (ESXi 5.1)

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My testing:

2 VMs, E1000 NICs, new vSwitch with no adapters. Statically assigned IPs.

Can ping each other.

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Same VMs, add adapter.

Can ping each other. cannot ping gateway (Destination host unreachable)

Confirmed with our networking guru that VLANs are set correctly on the ports, and the VMware config matches his config. Not a VLAN issue.

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Change to VMXNET3 NICs

Can ping eachother and gateway and everything else.

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So surely its an issue with the E1000's?!?

Similar VMs (E1000's on vmx-09 hardware) work fine in my production environment, running 5.1.

[maniyuvaraj]

Hi,

Please refer the KB 2035911, it may help you.

[unda]

Thanks for the reply, but doesnt seem to apply.

Aside from the fact im not using win8, let alone 32bit...

I'm not ADDING a vNIC, This is for a freshly built VM, in default configuration. There is only 1 vNIC installed.

EDIT: I guess my first post was a bit misleading. I'm not ADDING the VMXNET3 adapter, I'm replacing the E1000 with a VMXNET3.

[unda · Accepted solution]

Found the issue. It was VLAN tagging on the switches were done incorrectly. It seems VMXNET3 can work past this somehow.