Hey, we have a HPE GEN9 DL380 host that we upgraded from 6.5u3 to 6.7u3 and are experiencing flapping on the NIC. We upgraded the NIC to the latest firmware via HPE VMWare firmware last friday night, it had no issues, after rebooting the firmware was updated, however when upgrading the ESXI to 6.7U3 we are experiencing flapping on the iscsi NICs to the SAN. Any thoughts?
Hello
As sent you have the latest firmware and driver installed
Firmware version: bc 1.46 ncsi 1.5.27
Driver 4.1.5.0
At this point, there is nothing left but to try with the previous driver version
ntg3 version 4.1.3.2-1vmw
Hello.
Attached is a link that might help you
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2038869
You should also perform (or verify) that
change the MTU from the default of 1500 to 9000 in the vswitch and Nics that are in your ISCSI configuration.
Is your connection to the stroage direct or through Switch ?
Sorry for the delay on the response. I will have to see about enabling linkflapprevention on the switch. Yes, the connection goes through a cisco switch to the SAN. We have applied the latest patch to 6.7U3 which was supposed to have updated NTG3 drivers included. We have confirmed it is using the NTG3 driver/module/VIB and identified as a Broadcom 5719. We have worked with HPE and VMWare support and really have just gotten passed back and forth between them. They both have indicated a physical layer 1 issue, however when we load 6.5 esxi back on the host, the flapping is gone and no longer present. Also up for debate is upgrading the NIC in the server to a 10 gb PCIe card that is supported by VMWare.
Hello.
Please indicate the type and model of the NIC as well as its part number.
In general, when updating a version or a driver, factors may occur that were not considered in the previous version or had greater tolerance.
The NIC is the 331i 4 port 1gb NIC, also falls under the NX1 Broadcom on HP Support.
https://citrixready.citrix.com/hewlett-packard-enterprise/ethernet-1gb-4-port-331i-adapter.html
Hello.
Log into the ESXi host and in an SSH session run the following commands to identify the NIC name (vmnicxx) and then identify its firmware and current driver.
esxcli network nic list
esxcli network nic get -n vmnicxx
Last Firmware
link: https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/public/swd/detail?swItemId=MTX_648f0b90d7c2438b82851940e2#tab3
Let me know if you cannot read them.
HPE just asked us to put this Firmware on that was released 3 days ago: https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/public/swd/detail?swItemId=MTX_4f19da2bceff4b73a31531d71e#tab1 that is now done, but did not help .
Hello
As sent you have the latest firmware and driver installed
Firmware version: bc 1.46 ncsi 1.5.27
Driver 4.1.5.0
At this point, there is nothing left but to try with the previous driver version
ntg3 version 4.1.3.2-1vmw
Honestly I am not sure how we do that, do we just run the older VIB?
Hello.
you can get the indicated version of the driver
in the offline Bundle
VMware-ESXi-6.7.0-Update2-13006603-HPE-Gen9plus-670.U2.10.4.1.8-Apr2019-depot.zip
ntg3--4.1.3.2-1vmw.670.1.28.10302608--VMW--VMwareCertified--2019-04-02
https://customerconnect.vmware.com/downloads/details?downloadGroup=OEM-ESXI67U2-HPE&productId=742
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2079279
I am remote to this sytem as it is in a colocation, pretty sure I will lose connectivity to the device doing this, lol. Let me see if I can do this through iLO.
okay downloaded the offline bundle, found the ntg3 folder, it contains VIB: VMW_bootbank_ntg3_4.1.3.2-1vmw.670.1.28.10302608.vib
I will follow the instructions provided to uninstall the module, I believe I can use HP's iLo console to maintain access to the host even though no where close to being near me.