ESXi 5 network not working, DHCP fails, Intel Gigabit CT Desktop Adapter

[Herbetroyd]

Hi,

I successfully installed ESXi 5.0.0-469512 on some refurbished HP/COMPAQ system, the only warning was that the system does not support HYPER-V or it is disabled in the BIOS. I installed ESXi 5 over ESXi 4.1 Update 1, opting to overwrite ESXi 4.1 but keep the VMFS volume. I have an Intel Gigabit CT Desktop Adapter (VID=8086, DID=10d3) installed, which is listed as supported on ESXi 5, and which worked fine with ESXi 4.1 but apparently is not working with ESXi 5 (even though installation completed with no complaints about the network card). DHCP lookup fails and ESXi 5 eventually settles on an IP of 169.254.0.1. The logs indicate that ESXi 5 does recognize the network card however, saying "NIC Link is Down" when I unplug the cable and "NIC Link is Up" when I plug the cable in. I proved that the network equipment works:

The ESXi 5 system is plugged into a hub, as is a Windows system running Wireshark. When I reboot the ESXi 5 system or restart its management network, Wireshark captures nothing. However, when I attempt to network boot the ESXi 5 system, Wireshark captures the DHCP requests and DHCP replies generated by network boot. So I know the network equipment works.

I have restarted the ESXi 5 system with the network cable unplugged, then plugged in the cable after the system began using 169.254.0.1. I gathered these logs, retyped by hand, all typos are mine:

(2) Vmkernel

cpu0:2629)<6>e1000e: vmnic1 NIC Link is Up 100 Mbps Full Duplex, Flow Control: RX/TX

cpu0:2629)<6>0000:03:00.0: vmnic1: 10/100 speed: disabling TSO

cpu1:2077)NetPort: 1426: disabled port 0x3

cpu1:2077)Uplink: 5244: enabled port 0x3 with mac 00:1b:21:xx:xx:xx

(4) Management Agent (hostd)

[44333B90 info 'VmkVprobSource'] VmkVprobSource::Post event: (vim.event.EventEx) {

...

-->    eventTypeId = "esx.clear.net.vmnic.linkstate.up",

...

[44333B90 info 'ha-eventmgr'] Event 14 : Physical NIC vmnic1 linkstate is up.

...

[44333B90 info 'VmkVprobSource'] VmkVprobSource::Post event: (vim.event.EventEx) {

...

-->    eventTypeId = "esx.problem.dhclient.lease.none",

...

[44333B90 info 'ha-eventmgr'] Event 15 : Unable to obtain a DHCP lease on interface vmk0.

(6) VMware ESXi Observation log (vobd)

[netCorrelator] ...: [vob.net.vmnic.linkstate.up] vmnic vmnic1 linkstate up

[netCorrelator] ...: [esx.clear.net.vmnic.linkstate.up] Physical NIC vmnic1 linkstate is up

[UserLevelCorrelator] ...: [vob.user.dhclient.lease.none] Could not get a lease on interface vmk0.

[UserLevelCorrelator] ...: [esx.problem.dhclient.lease.none] Unable to obtain a DHCP lease on interface vmk0.

[GenericCorrelator] ...: [vob.user.dhclient.lease.none] Could not get a lease on interface vmk0.

...

As the network card is supported, and I don't have an alternative supported network card available, I'm not sure how to proceed to troubleshoot this. Does anyone have suggestions?

[Datto]

I can tell you that I had to do all kinds of horsing-around-time-wasting to get an Intel CT NIC to work properly under ESXi 4.x and finally threw all the Intel CT NICs into the garbage and instead, swapped in Intel PT NICs (which worked immediately by the way). Haven't had problems with the PT series of NICs since.

You might be able to still read what I (and others) did when I was working with the CT NICs under ESXi 4.x in the forums here and that may, once again, be applicable to getting the CT NICs to work under ESXi 5.0.

Then again, you might have Black Magic, Voodoo and Super Powers at your disposal to be able to immediately get the Intel CT series to work reliably and properly with ESXi 5.0 without it being a big wasting time sink.

Datto

[Herbetroyd]

I just figured it out, sorry for the noise. The supported Intel adapter was detected and assigned as vmnic1, but an unsupported integrated adapter had somehow also been detected and was assigned as vmnic0. I just now looked in Configure Management Network --> Network Adapters, and vmnic0 was selected [X] while vmnic1 was deselected [ ]. Thus, even though ESXi 5 showed the status of vmnic0 as Disconnected and the status of vmnic1 as Connected, it was not using vmnic1 because it was deselected. I selected it and now all is well. But thank you for taking the time to reply!