HP NC375T quad NIC and ESXi 5.0 - NIC's dropping

[Alceryes]

We have an ESXi 5.0 on an ML350 G6 with an HP NC375 quad NIC. We've just been using the two onboard NIC's (one VM network - 6 VM's, one DMZ network for security VM). Recently, we attempted to get the quad NIC going and team 4 NIC's for bandwidth and fault tolerance. We noticed something was odd when one of the 4 NIC's on the card would only come up at 100/full. If we tried to force it at 1000/full on the switch it would go down/down. During configuration, we lost all the NIC's on a couple occasions and had to shut all but the original onboard to get link back. We finally got it up and running and it worked fine for about 36 hours but then all NIC's but the one original onboard went down again.

Any ideas?

Anyone know of a way to diagnose the NIC without pulling it out of the ESXi host and putting it in a windows box?

Edit - All the NIC's are trunked on the switch and we are doing 'route based on IP hash' for the ESXi network.

[a_p_]

Please take a look at http://vibsdepot.hp.com/hpq/apr2013/esxi-5x-devicedrivers/ where you can find the latest drivers for this NIC. Download and install nx_nic-esx50-5.0.626-904265.zip, which is the supported version listed in http://www.vmware.com/go/hcl.

André

[Alceryes]

Thx André.

Can the driver update be done with the guests in production? We are currently not using that NIC.

[a_p_]

On HP's driver website for the NC375T it says:

Reboot Requirement:

Reboot is not required after installation for updates to take effect and hardware stability to be maintained.

However, I'm usually careful and do something like this without VMs running to minimize risks.

André

[markzz]

I'd suggest you prepare for a reboot to attain stability.. Update the firmware on the card at the same time. This also requires a reboot.

BUT more of an issue is the stability of the NC375T cards. They are quite poor.. There does not appear to be any solution to this stability issue it's simple the rubbish qLogic chipset which causes it.

If you can replace it with a NC365T.