Unable to connect to ESX 4.1 Host

[brighterdave]

Bare with me.  I have some experience using VMWARE but less on the hardware side of things. Someone else setup our environment so I am learning as I go here. 

I have a Dell blade chassis with 4 blades.  Two blades are windows servers.  Two blades are running VMWare (One ESX 4.1 and one ESXi 4.1).  Up until a few weeks ago we had the blade chassis in a collocation facility.  We have since mode it in house at our physical location.  I was able to configure our firewall to the blade using the same subnet. The two windows servers and the ESXi 4.1 have been running fine since the migration, but the ESX 4.1 server cannot be accessed except through the CMC iDRAC6.  Pinging the machine from a server on the same subnet does not work, though it does for the other ESXi host.  Pinging from the ESX host does not work either.

Any help in getting this back up and running would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

Dave

[JagadeeshDev]

Do you get a DCUI access to the host ? Try resetting the IP settings.

[brighterdave]

I can iDRAC but not sure how to DCUI or reset the IP.  'll try and figure it out but if you can give me instructions without to much trouble that would be great.

Thanks for the reply.

[brighterdave]

UPDATE: I have ESX on the server having an issue.  ESX doesn't have DCUI from what I read.  I guess I'll just try resetting the IP.

[JagadeeshDev]

Refer to this VMware KB: Configuring the ESXi Management Network from the direct console

[JagadeeshDev]

If its ESX then you would need to reset using service console. VMware KB: Verifying ESX host networking configuration on the service console

[brighterdave]

cat /etc/hosts gives me the following

127.0.0.1         localhost

::1               localhost

192.168.30.203    VMServer1.ourdomain.com VMServer1

cat /etc/sysconfig/network gave me:

NETWORKING=yes

HOSTNAME=VMServer1

GATEWAY=192.168.30.2

GATEWAYDEV=vswif0

IPV6_AUTOCONF=no

NETWORKING_IPV6=no

cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-vswif0 game me:

DEVICE=vswif0

BOOTPROTO=static

BROADCAST=192.168.30.255

IPADDR=192.168.30.203

NETMASK=255.255.255.0

NETWORK=192.168.30.0

ONBOOT=yes

PORTGROUP="Service Console"

MACADDR=(the MAC ADDRESS but i removed it)

route -n:

192.168.30.0     0.0.0.0         255.255.255.0   U     0      0        0 vswif0

169.254.0.0     0.0.0.0         255.255.0.0     U     0      0        0 vswif0

0.0.0.0         192.168.30.2    0.0.0.0         UG    0      0        0 vswif0

cat /etc/resolv.conf:

nameserver 192.168.30.1

search (our domain but I removed)

All looks like what it needs to be yet the results are the same 😕

[JagadeeshDev]

Everything seems good. Can you try to ping from ESX to outer network or the gateway ? Did you checked the uplinks ?

[brighterdave]

it won't ping anything.  all the nics say up and the physical ports are all connected to the same switches and ports as they were before the move.  All also have the green/amber lights showing activity.  I'm stumped. 

[JagadeeshDev]

Try deleting the service console network and readding it back :

esxcfg-vswitch  –d vSwitch0 –> To remove virtual switch

esxcfg-vswitch  –a vSwitch0 –> To re-add a virtual switch

esxcfg-vswitch -L vmnic0 vSwitch0 –> To assign physical nic0  (repeat and add additional nics)

esxcfg-vswif  -d vswif0 –> To remove the service console network.

esxcfg-vswif -a vswif0 -p “Service Console” -i 10.100.0.114 -n 255.255.255.128 –> Add a Service Console (vswif0)

esxcfg-vswitch -v 69 -p “Service Console” vSwitch0 –> Add Vlan 69 to service console on vSwitch0

Restart the service to make network changes effect

[brighterdave]

I wasn't able to get to this today.  I did as you mentioned, by deleteing the service console network...restarting the network and then adding the service console.  When I added the service console I got the following errors:

'Vnic' warning - Generated New Mac Address (mac address) for vswif0

"NetworkInfoImpl' warning ] Cannot update Management NIC, no suitable network connection found. 

Nothing to flush

[brighterdave]

Correction: I WAS able to get to this.  See notes in previous post.

THanks,