How can I disable unused NICs in ESX

[MC1903]

Hello,

I have an unused NIC in each of my ESX 3.0.1 hosts which I would like to disable, as HP Systems Insight Manager (SIM) is constantly complaining that there is a 'Major Failure' because they are not live.

Can I do this from within ESX/software? - I.e. without resorting to using 'RJ45 terminators'?

Cheers

Martin

[Texiwill]

Hello,

You can do this in the BIOS of the machine. I can not remember the exact path, but you can disable physical NICs in the BIOS. If they are add in NICS there may be a different path. You can also tell HPSIM to ignore the alert.

Best regards,

Edward

[Borat_Sagdiev]

If the NIC is one of the on-board Broadcoms:

\- press F9 and enter Setup

\- go into on-board devices ( I think, not near an HP server now)

\- disable the NIC

If the NIC is a PCI add-on device:

\- F9 into Setup

\- Under PCI devices disable the NIC in question

[Paul_B1]

Also if you run into the same issue as we did with the ILO's, you can disable them this way:

- Edit /opt/compaq/cma.conf

- Add cpqci to the list of excluded modules (one of the first lines)

The ILO will report a major error even if you disable it in the BIOS until you add that to the cma.conf file.

We don't need the ILOs in our primary datacenter as we have IP KVM and 24x7 onsite operators manning the datacenter.

[RParker]

This only works with embedded NIC, not add-in cards. He wants to know how to do this in ESX to disable the add-in NIC.

[jayolsen]

On the service console will this work? Not sure never tried but sounds like maybe what you are after. Plus wouldn't have to get in the bios later to enable when needed.

ifconfig down

[Texiwill]

Hello,

The ifconfig only works if the device is allocated to the service console. If it is the iLO then it can not be allocated.

As for disabling NICs in cards, then that depends on the firmware for the card. There may be a way to tell it to disable the port. You would need to discuss this with the vendor.

For HPSIM/HPSMH, the ignore should work. There may be another way and HP could help with that as well.

Best regards,

Edward

[Paul_B1]

In the 2.x world I had to assign the unused NICs to the SC for SIM not to complain about them if I remember correctly. Not sure how that would work with VI3, but maybe worth a shot.

[ua988180]

I tried disable NIC in BIOS, when ESX boots up, guest what? It has kernel panic, after i have enabled the NIC card, everything was fine again, any good way to disable NIC in ESX?

[AndyShine]

Martin,

I had the same problem as you. Also running ESX 3.01 as well as HP 7.8.0 Agents running on HP bl460c blade servers. Each server had a mezzanine dual port network card installed.

The unused nic wasn't assigned to anything and was on the mezzanine card.

I ran the "ifconfig down" command and my problem was fixed.

Regards

Andrew

[skippy33]

You are right AndyShine, the ifconfig vmnicx down works.

You can add this command in the boot script (/etc/rc.local file) because on the next boot it will be up again...