Service Console failover function is not working in Dell Blade environment

[vengadasalam]

Hi Gurus,

We have a VMWARE VI 3.5 Infrastructure on Dell blade environment with following configuration:

Enclosure : Dell M1000 Blade enclosure/

Server : Dell M600 Blades (16 nos)/ 1 X dual port onboard NIC and 2 X dual port daughter boards ( so total 6 pNIC on each ESX)

SAN : Dell PS5000x / Interface : iSCSI software initiator

Blade Switches : Cisco 3130 G Ethernet switches ( 6 nos)

Network configuration details as below:

Vswitch 0 :-

Associated Physical Adapter - vmnic0 (onboard)

Ports configured - Vmotion(VMKernel Port) 10.0.0.x

- SC 1 192.168.90.x

Vswitch 1 :-

Associated Physical Adapters - vmnic1(onboard) and vmnic2

Ports configured - SC 2 192.168.91.11

- iSCSI (VMKernel Port) 192.168.91.x

Vswitch 2 :-

Associated physical adapters - vmnic3,vmnic4 and vmnic5

Port configured - Public (VM Machine port)

Entire VI infrastructure has been built and we are in the process of testing Service Console failover function.

It is my understanding/assumption that if any of the SC 1 components failed ( vmnic0 or associated Cisco 3130 switch - in this case it is 3130 G switch number 1)

So, we attempted to Unplug 3130 switch # 1 to test the SC failover, unfortunately, failover didn't happen after we unplug it. VC has lost its connection to ESX and also unable to connect through SSH, however all the VMs are running on absolutely fine.

Please can someone aid me here to achieve my failover function. Is there any specific configuration that I'm missing?

Thanks

Vengadasalam

[malaysiavm]

you need to check your network connectivity on SC 2. I am not sure why your configuration as shown below, you should always separate the vmkernel traffic for ISCSI with the production network and SC network IP is usually on production network as you require to have communication to your virtual center for manage ability. Beside that, to have SC2 is to prevent HA kick in during the NIC failure on primary SC. If you wish to have full redundant on SC1, you should provide 2 physical NIC and team it up together. Just my suggestion to you.

Malaysia VMware Communities -

[patrickds]

Your SC on vswitch0 is the primary SC used for management, and it has only one backing physical NIC, connected to its physical switch.

To have redundancy you should put 2 pNICs on vswitch0

SC2 on vswitch is only used for iSCSI connection, and does not provide redundancy for SC1.