esxi 4.1 doesn't show 2 ports on 4-port NIC

[Budrumi]

Hi. I have a weird problem.

Just installed ESXi 4.1 U1 on a Dell R710 server. That server has onboard Broadcom NetXtreme II 5709c quad-port adapter. All of the ports previously worked fine (had Windows installed on that machine).

But now ESXi only sees the first two ports in the GUI (vSphere Client) - vmnic0 and vmnic1. The other two ports aren't listed there.

I've enabled tech support console and "/usr/sbin/hwinfo -p" actually lists all 4 ports (vmnic0-3), but vmnic2 and vmnic3 have no driver listed next to them.

I've tried:

- disabling and re-enabling them in BIOS in hope they would get re-detected by ESXi

- updating the drivers in ESXi for 5709

- reset server BIOS to default settings

Any ideas what might be wrong (aside from the possibility that those 2 ports somehow broke over night)?

[lostjames]

Hi, does this post point you anywhere? looks like it might be a known driver issue.

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1542822

[Budrumi]

Thanks for replying, but unfortunately that post doesn't help. I've already found that one (and several similar ones before), that's also why I've updated the bnx2 driver with the latest version from VMWare's web.

[Budrumi]

It turned out to be a hardware issue (or so it seems). Dell support wasn't too sure if it's a HW problem, but they decided to change the motherboard anyway and it's alright since then.

[lostjames]

Nice, glad it is fixed.

Did they change the NIC too? or Just the Motherboard?

[Budrumi]

Yep, well the the NIC ports are onboard of the mainboard, so they were exchanged too.