Network Adapters have benn re-numbered

[SeanDA]

I have an 6 x IBM x3550 servers in a Datacentre. Each server has 2 onboard Broadcom Adapters (vmnic0 and vmnic1)

In one of the PCI slots I have a Quad port Intel Gigabit adapter (vmnic2, 3, 4 and 5).

I installed a dual port QLogic iSCSI adapter into the second PCI slot of each server. Now my vmnics which relate to the Intel Quad POrt adapter are showing as vmnic6, 7, 8 and 9.

How can I re-number them back to vmnic2, 3, 4 and 5?

Thanks.

[team-ip-service]

Hi,

you may try to change the names in /etc/vmware/esx.conf.

search for vmkname and or vmnic(number).

I can rember that I did this for test pruposes (disaster recovery) and it worked. But I'm not sure if this is a good way at all.

Markus

[SeanDA]

Thanks for the response. The servers are in production, and I have managed to get them back working by connecting the newly numbered pnics back to the original vswitches.

Does anyone know if this is the supported way of proceeding?

Thanks.

[team-ip-service]

Hi,

I would put one in maintaince mode. Stop the vmware daemons, call "tar cvf /root/mybackup.tar -C /etc vmware" and change the entries.

Then reboot and I would see if it works. If not you could simply change it back or replace the config with the backup.

Since I'm not afraid in my environment if I loos one esx host for I while, I be sometimes simply pragmatic. If I would fear that some worse could happend, I surely would read documentation.Or open a VMWare Support request.

cu

Markus

[SeanDA]

If you are interested, I managed to fix this myself....

Reboot the server and disable the Quad port nic in the server BIOS,

Reboot into VMware, Hardware reconfiguration is performed and server reboots - now only 2 onboard adapters shown.

Restart server and re-enable adapter, again hardware reconfiguration completed.

Now server boots with 6 x pnics, labelled vmnic0 - vmnic5.

Thanks .