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doGmaI
Contributor
Contributor

VMWare not responding to ping after management network problems

Hi everyone

Last week a strange thing happened.

We have a 3Node ESXi cluster, with a lot of virtual machine on it

For an uknown reason, one of the node had a problem on the management network (suddenly stopped responding to ping and got disconnected from VCenter): the virtual machine hosted on this node kept working with no problem, but I wasn't able to reconnect the node to the VCenter using the vSphere "connect" command.

So I had to connect a keyboard to the server, and restart the management network. Everything is back to work except 4 VM, that still don't respond to ping and I can't remote desktop connect to them.

I tried disabling the network card inside the OS (which is Windows Server 2008R2) and tried editing the properties of the VM (disabling and re-enabling the network), but nothing worked. I had to move the VM to another node and the VM works flawlessy. If I move the VM back to the problematic node, I still get the problem of the VM not responding to anything on the network

I tried to double check the vSwitch.

Below is the vSwitch (which is the only network attached to the VMs that still have problems)

Cattura.JPG

Any suggestions?

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4 Replies
JCMorrissey
Expert
Expert

Hi,

I would test each of the nic's separately to ascertain if there is a problem with their routing etc eg

i) remove one of the vmnics from the vswitch

ii) create a separate portgroup and the vmnic to it - test each of the vm's against the new portgroup and repeat

until you find the "problem" vmnic

Please consider marking as "helpful", if you find this post useful. Thanks!... http://johncmorrissey.wordpress.com/
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a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

Just a thought: Are the VM's assigned to the same uplink/vmnic? You can see the VM <-> vmnic assignment by e.g. running esxtop (press "n" for network).

André

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rickardnobel
Champion
Champion

Which NIC teaming policy are you using?

If "IP Hash" then the VMs traffic to the same IP destinations will always be assigned to the same outgoing interface, and it does seems like one of the physical interfaces is not working. (Or is not correctly configured on the physical switch.)

My VMware blog: www.rickardnobel.se
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doGmaI
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks everyone for the responses.

Sorry for the delay, but I was home sick Smiley Sad

@JCMorrissey my colleague rebooted the server and moved all the VMs to another node, because it was getting problematic with those VM not working, so I can't test it right now. I will keep it in mind, since it's been the second time in less than 6 months that this problem arised

@a.p. right now the VM are on a different node, so I can't confirm it

@rickardnobel no, the NIC reaming policy is set to "Route base on the originating virtual port ID"

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