Trouble with ethernet not reestablishing connection after drop

[PipingRockIT]

I am working on a system running ESXi 6.0 with Intel i210 ethernet.  It has an issue where if the network connection drops it doesn't reestablish connection when it is restored without rebooting the whole system.  I am now working on setting up the second network adapter and I have it plugged into a switch and both server and switch ports have link lights but it is listed as down, and running cli commands to force it up don't work.  I wasn't the one to initially set up this server so it is possible it was misconfigured somewhere.  The vmkernel.log shows the error >igb 0000:08:00.0: Hardware Error when I try to initialize the interface. Can anyone advise how to fix this?

[TheBobkin]

Hello,

Has this always behaved like this or did it start occurring after changing driver/firmware?

When vmkernel says "Hardware failure" for something it generally indicates a firmware issue (or less often, an actual physically failing device).

If you are not on latest firmware, updating to that (and matching driver) would likely be the best place to start.

Unsure if possibly related in any way but seeing a few bits online relating to issues with firmware on these cards:

https://patchwork.ozlabs.org/patch/690464/

Bob

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[PipingRockIT]

As far as I know it's always done this.  It happened once about 2 weeks ago when the switch was rebooted when upgrading firmware.  I assumed it was a fluke, but this time just swapping ethernet ports it happened again.  At this point I am assuming it's always had this issue.