Newbie! Esxi 5.5 host not reachable.

[momuzhu]

I have just installed Esxi on my Intel i7 Quad Core with 1TB HDD and 16G Ram. Installation was smooth however I am having issues connecting to Host.

Right after the boot I am able to ping the Host mgmt network for about a minute and it goes unresponsive then. I have checked the interface / mgmt network was up it just stops responding to ARPs.

vobd:

"Successfully sent event (esx.clear.net.vmnic.linkstate.up) after 1 failure."

"Successfully sent event (esx.audit.net.firewall.config.changed) after 1 failure."

"Successfully sent event (esx.audit.net.firewall.port.hooked) after 1 failure.

I have tried unloading the firewall using esxcli commands also changed firewall default-action to PASS. No luck.

Whenever I restart the host it stays up for couple of minutes and then is unreachable from my vmclient (or PC directly connected to host).

I am pretty new to this solution and have tried my luck searching through the database but haven't got definite answer. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Regards,

MM.

[cykVM]

Hi,

which mainboard you have there and which NIC (type/model) is used. I woulkd consider this a driver problem for the NIC...

cykVM

[momuzhu]

Hi cykVM,

Board is ASUS PH877-M with RealTek 1000 pro Card. RL8167...

esx5.5 didn't include RealTek anymore so I had use Esxi Customizer tool to create custom ISO which included this driver.

I was able to install it successfully though.

REgards,

MM.

[cykVM]

I read about several issues with certain realtek chipsets and the driver provided by v-front. At least this page: https://vibsdepot.v-front.de/wiki/index.php/List_of_currently_available_ESXi_packages does not list the 8167 chipset as being compatible to the provided driver (net55-r8168). So I guess there is no chance to fix this without a working driver.

The best option is to get a fully supported Intel NIC.

[momuzhu · Accepted solution]

Just to update, it seem to have corrected itself after a couple of reboots.

So to summarize, I had RealTek RLT8167 drivers when I had Windows installed on the machine however when I tried installing ESXi 5.5 it complained 'No Network Adapter Found'.

The reason for this is because ESXi 5.5 didn't include any RealTek drivers as Vmware had banned it in their software. So I had download RLT8168 drivers (Can also be found in above posted link by cykVM) and used ESXi Customizer tool to rebuild the ISO including the downloaded driver. This worked for me however the ESXi host wouldn't respond to its IP short while after reboot.

That is when I logged this post seeking help however, the very next day when I started the host it was consistently working and has been same until now. So no real change required except couple of reboots! I was about to purchase a supported network card but it turned out to be lucky for me!

Regards,

MM.