Problem with 2 Nic and vSwitch1

[wayne7215]

Hi

We have a problem with our second nic which we need only for one VM.

After we have to reinstall the ESX server this weekend because of changes on the existing partitions and more disks, it's not possible anymore to ping over the second Nic in this VM. Although I believe that everything is configured correctly and same as before and worked well until we have to reinstall the ESX.

VM Network on vSwitch0 has the 172.17.36.0 Network and all VM's use this switch as normal LAN-Nic and everything on this Network runs like a charm.

But one VM is a Windows 2003 Server which has a second nic and is physically connected to a device which is in a other subnet (172.16.0.0). Therefore we created a vSwitch1 with the second physically Nic from the ESX host and we named this network "TM_Network".

VI recognizes this Nic correctly as to be linked with 100 MBit!

In the VM settings we have inserted both Nic's and assigned them to the right network.

So far so good, but if we power up the VM Windows told me the second Nic is connected with 1GBit instead only with 100MBit and we can't ping to the device in this second subnet.

I checekd also the known problem with "hidden Nic's" with SET DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1 but there are only the two Nic's we used.

Reinstalled the VMWare Tools on the VM, recreated the vSwitch1 on the ESX but nothing helped.

esxcfg-vswitch -l looks also good

ipconfig /all shows me also everything as normal and with the correct physical adresses!

Windows IP Configuration

Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : otmserver

Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . :

Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Unknown

IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No

WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No

Ethernet adapter TM_Network:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :

Description . . . . . . . . . . . : VMware Accelerated AMD PCNet Adapter #2

Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-0C-29-4B-47-81

DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No

IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 172.16.0.90

Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0

Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :

Ethernet adapter LAN:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :

Description . . . . . . . . . . . : VMware Accelerated AMD PCNet Adapter

Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-0C-29-4B-47-77

DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No

IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 172.17.36.66

Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.254.0

Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 172.17.36.1

DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 172.17.36.3

172.17.36.50

Thanks all for the great responses.....much appreciated!

Addendum:

If I drop the patch cable on the Nic2 port VC regognize that and shows me the Nic as "Disconnected" but in the VM Windows shows me this Nic already as "Connected" with 1GB bps.

So I think it must be a similar problem as "fabbasi" has in this Thread VM network interface Mapping/matching problem - VM conf vs VM

[ShanVMLand]

Although your NIC 100MBps, the Guest always connected 1Gbps speed. After installed the VMWare Tools, it optimize the networking performance. Thatswhat, you are seeing 1Gbps speed. http://communities.vmware.com/message/514863

But one VM is a Windows 2003 Server which has a second nic and is physically connected to a device which is in a other subnet (172.16.0.0). Therefore we created a vSwitch1 with the second physically Nic from the ESX host and we named this network "TM_Network".

It might be your VLAN problem. If you suspect this would be network card problem, you can switch over to "VM Network" port group and try it.

Shan

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[wayne7215]

+"Although your NIC

100MBps, the Guest always connected 1Gbps speed. After installed the

VMWare Tools, it optimize the networking performance. Thatswhat, you

are seeing 1Gbps speed."+

Ok, that explains why I alway see a 1 Gbps connection, but if I physically drop the patch cable from the second Nic, it would be very helpful for troubleshooting if VMWare Tools this recognize also and show this Nic in the VM also as "Disconnected".

But I don't think I need to configure VLAN's for this situation! Because it worked before like a charme also without VLAN.

I have only 2 Nic's in one VM and they have different subnets, so it should be possible to bridge Nic1 from the ESX host to the Nic 1 in the VM and the same with Nic 2.

I think there is a problem with the registry in the VM or with the VMX file, which sores old informations from our first ESX installation.

Any other suggestions?

[Lightbulb]

I assume you have a route entry on the Windows 2003 VM for the 172.16.0.0/24 network as there would need to be a persistent route in place for the VM to communicate with other systems in that network.

Also you could bring up another VM and attach it to vswitch1 and assign it an IP in the 172.16.0.0/24 network. I use DSL () for this kind of thing. In this way you could eliminate any issue with the ESX host configuration.