How to Remove and replace Nic Safetly?

[Brian_H]

I have a bad NIC in one of my slots on an ESX 3.0.2 server. Id like to remove the NIC and replace it with a new one. Before I remove the NIC id like to know if there are any commands I need to run to 'unregister" the NIC and then what commands I woiuld need to run to "register" the new NIC.

Thanks everyone!

[oreeh]

If you replace it with the same type and use the same slot there's no special action required.

[Brian_H]

Unfortunately I will have to replace it with another brand. Both are under VMwares approved NICs.. The bad one was a broadcom and the new one will be an Intel

[BenLe]

Are you talking about a hot-plug NIC replacement? I think the safest way would be to shutdown the ESX and then replace the faulty NIC.

However, if you are using VirtualCenter, remove the NIC from the vSwitch and after hardware replacement add the new NIC to the vSwitch.

"esxcfg-vswitch" is the commandline alternative....

[oreeh]

In this case I would remove the pNICs from the associated vSwitches, replace the NIC and (re-)add the pNIC to the vSwitches.

I'm pretty sure that this really isn't required but to be safe...

[Brian_H]

The system will be able to be shutdown completely. no hot-swap needed. I just wanted to make sure that once I pull out the bad nic and replace it with the new one, VMware wouldnt go bonkers looking for the old one because it would have been still "registered". The bad NIC is not even being used yet. i was going to start using it and then realized it had a problem. It has not even been associated to any Vswitch's yet either.

So it sounds like its easier than i thought.

shutdown ESX server, pull out old nic, put new nic in, turn box back on and all should be fine.

[TiBoReR]

as oreeh said, i would remove the pNIC from its vSwitch before to be sure.

[boydd]

Like mentioned above - remove nic from vSwitch first. Then run "kudzu" from the CLI to clean things up.

DB

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