VMware Cloud Community
mschau
Contributor
Contributor

ESXi 5.1 Management Network Redundancy error after installing second quad-port NIC

Today I installed a second Intel quad-port NIC into six hosts.  After rebooting all the hosts now complain that it lacks Management network redundancy.

There were 2 VMNICs assigned to the vSwitch which has the management network on it, previous to installing the second quad-port NIC there was no error.

As a test I removed some NICs, added others, the current state is 4 VMNICs.

0,1 are the 2 onboard NICs, 3 and 5 are on the original quad-port card.

Every host I added the second quad-port to exhibits this issue.

I am stumped, it feels like a bug but I'm not seeing anyone else complaining about it for 5.1

Again I had no problems until I added the second quad-port.

Technical Details

IBM x3650 M3

ESXi 5.1.0, 799733

Enterprise

2 x  X5690 @ 3.47Ghz

Single cluster with HA and DRS enabled.

vSwitch.png

vmnics.png

redundancy.png

Reply
0 Kudos
3 Replies
BilBens
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Networking redundancy between cluster hosts is absolutely critical for VMware HA reliability. Redundant management networking enables the reliable detection of failures and prevents isolation conditions from occurring. You can implement network redundancy at the network adapter level or at the management network level.

here is a scenario redundancy

-------------

Bil Bens

Please consider the use of the Helpful or correct buttons to award points to those Answers you found useful or correct.
Reply
0 Kudos
mschau
Contributor
Contributor

Hello BilBens, Please refer to my original post where I clearly show that I have a configuration which should be considered acceptable by ESXi and which was not generating the warning regarding redundancy until I had installed another quad-port NIC.

Reply
0 Kudos
mschau
Contributor
Contributor

I ended up removing the hosts from vCenter and re-adding them.  Note that rebooting the hosts, reinitializing HA, removing hosts from the cluster and re-adding them or restarting the management service didn't help.  I had to completely remove them from vCenter and re-add.  No other changes were made so the problem seems to have existed entirely in vCenter.

Not entirely happy with the solution since it doesn't explain what happened other than something was reporting incorrectly in vCenter.

Reply
0 Kudos