BIOS upgrade removes NICs from vswitches

[Wimo]

I am upgrading some HP BL465 G1 blades from ESX 3.0.2 to 3.5 U4. On one, I did the upgrade, then found that there was a much newer BIOS from April 2009. So I upgraded it, then discovered that on all the vswitches except the Service Console, the NICs had been removed. Going through the wizard to add them back worked fine.

On another blade, I did the BIOS upgrade first, then checked. Same thing, with ESX still at 3.0.2. Anyone seen this before?

[kjb007]

Interesting. Haven't seen that before. Did the vmnic numbering stay the same, or were they different?

-KjB

VMware vExpert

[Wimo]

To be honest, I'm not sure. Didn't think to check first, but will on the next one. Right now the whole project is stalled until we resolve an unrelated problem with LUNs being presented differently to different hosts.

[kjb007]

If for some reasons, your vmnic numbering changes, then you have all new NICs, which means the older ones don't exist, so they can't be attached to the vSwitch.

-KjB

VMware vExpert

[TB_Rich · Accepted solution]

Yes I have had this when running HP firmware cd, nic firmware updated and ESX essentially see's the NIC's as new. Instead of vmnic 0-3 I then had 4-7. Had to console on and re-setup the vSwitches from the command line as not even the SC vSwitch had an adapter assigned to it. Even changed my HBA name's aswell.

From now on I always Firmware CD before a full renistall to say the next ESX version. Keep's everything consistent that way too.

[davidbarclay]

I'm guessing that your BIOS update did something to affect the PCI IDs of your NICs, so ESX detected them as "new" NICs and your old nics were removed.

Not pretty, but at least you can fix it quickly. Thank god for maintenance mode!

Dave