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media_gen
Contributor
Contributor

VMware ESX 3.01, VMs can't see network

I couple of days ago my VMs that are running on ESX 3.01 lost their connectivity to our network. I was able to ping the hosts themselves, but any VMs we had running on our Computer Room VLAN were not reachable via ping.

Any of the VMs that run through the Computer Room VLAN use either of the two NICs we have dedicated on each of our three hosts. Any VMs running on another NIC we have dedicated to our Firewall were still on the network.

I also had our networking guys check into this and he said it appeared that packets were making it to our hosts but he wasn't receiving any response from the hosts. I restarted all three hosts and it eventually corrected the problem, anyone ever ran into anything like this?

Todd

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DLaRose
Contributor
Contributor

Well this is interesting... a strange coincidence?

I just ran into the same thing. (ESX3.01 as well)

The ESX console can access the network but all the VMs can only see each other. Can't get to a VM and the VMs can't even ping out.

There was nothing changed in the last week.

The firewall settings look fine.

Restarted the ESX server, but no change...

This morning all the VMs just went dead wrt network connections in or out of the ESX server...

Any ideas guys?

-Dave

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hicksj
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

The 2 pNIC's you have assigned to your vSwitch that lost connectivity, are they the same vendor/make? In other words, are they both using the same network driver?

The ESX firewall setting only affect the Console, so that should not be impacting your VM Port Group.

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DLaRose
Contributor
Contributor

Hi,

Yes this is an IBM 3650 and we are using the built-in NICs.

Driver is reported as bnx2...

Only one NIC was ever hooked up.

Thanks for clarifying the firewall's purpose

-Dave

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DLaRose
Contributor
Contributor

I have been looking around, and noted:

The nics in the vm's reported as 10Mb before this occured.

Since the restart they all report 1Gb connection.

The VM's NICS have always been set to autonegotiate and have (in the past) always come up as 10Mb.

I'm not sure where to look next.

Very strange...

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DLaRose
Contributor
Contributor

Hi all,

Problem resolved.

We were connected to a Cisco switch, and port security was enabled.

Disabled port security on the switchport connected to the ESX server and everything came back to life.

-Dave

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media_gen
Contributor
Contributor

We're running 3 Dell 6850s and both NICs on each host that we have dedicated to the vSwitch are the same brand, Intel PRO 1000PT, Dual Port.

We changed the NIC speed from "Auto-Negotiate" to 1000mb Full-Duplex on each host's NICs as well as on our physical switches. Since then our drops are not as frequent, only 1 since the change.

I'm still having a hard time connecting new VMs to our network, they require me to switch to a different vNIC and then it'll obtain an IP, after that I switch it back it typically connects. I'm also losing Network Connection on VMs that I reboot. Any ideas on this?

Todd H.

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media_gen

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media_gen
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Contributor

Physical switch failure was causing issues.

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