upgrading tools or hardware to 4 causes new nic

[darcos]

When we do a upgrade to a vm that is windows 2008 from 3.5 tools to 4.0 tools and hardware 7. It creates a new nic for our second nic. Not sure why. Can anyone explain why this is occuring? Our first nic keeps the static ip, the second nic is new and has a dhcp address assigned. I go into hidden devices and find that their is a hidden nic that has the old settings before the upgrade.

[Troy_Clavell]

this is part of the virtual hardware upgrade. You will have to go in and remove the "ghosted" NIC.

....and for that matter, I would remove all ghosted devices.

[darcos]

So this is common with all hardware upgrades? So all my nics will get a new NIC and not keep settings? This is bad if you do nlb or windows clustering. Do you know of a vm article talking about this?

[darcos]

Found the issue and resolution.

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=101557...

[sketchy00]

...Just the beginning of all sorts of Virtual Hardware 7 fun.

http://itforme.wordpress.com/2010/01/17/side-effects-of-upgrading-vms-to-virtual-hardware-7-in-vsphe...

[darcos]

Wow thanks for the link.

[joshuatownsend]

This certainly does play games with MSCS or NLB - can even screw with basics like DNS and DHCP as I wrote about here: http://vmtoday.com/2009/11/vsphere-upgrade-breaks-active-directory/

VM Hardware upgrades are unavoidable if you want to move forward to newer ESXi versions, so document the heck out of your environment (there are some great scripts available in the community to do this). You can also hard-code the VM's MAC address and use DHCP reservations as a workaround..... Bottom line: plan, test, document, do.

If you found this or other information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful".

Please visit http://vmtoday.com for News, Views and Virtualization How-To's

Follow me on Twitter - @joshuatownsend