Hi,
I am running ESX Server 3i 3.5.0 build 110271 (yes I am aware of the updates available). The past 4 days the main network interface which has theVKernel port attached to it and provides Internet access to all the guest machines has locked up requiring a reboot of the ESX server to fix it. Basically this NIC stops routing packets and I cannot see any IP address assigned on that Interface. Fortunately I have two other cards in this box one of which I have configured another VKernel on so when this happens I am able to back door into the thing and remotely reboot it. ESX still things the NIC is working and does not show any errors.
At this point I have no information regarding the integrity of the hardware as I cannot run Open Manage (Dell PowerEdge 6650) nor do I have a DRAC card installed at this time. Before I get that deep in the troubleshooting process I was wondering if there is any reason to believe that there may be an issue with some configuration settings that may cause this.
The last VM guest I installed was Windows 2008 Server, installed VMware Tools and enabled Paravirtualization support. After I had done that I read that Paravirtualization only works with Linux/Unix but I could not find any information to back that up. Can anyone verify this? Since then I have disabled Paravirt on that host to see if that solves it.
Also, is it possible that Paravirtualization itself would cause this type of issue, and only on a single NIC rather than all of them?
Barring the need to upgrade ESXi and checking the server hardware either with a DRAC card or a Dell Diag CD, has anyone else encountered this issue and could point me in the right direction?
My setup consists of the following:
Dell PowerEdge 6650
16GB of RAM
Dual Quad Core Xeons
15 Total VM Guest machines (11 of which are running)
Average Resource usage is 1400 MHz CPU, 6.6GB of Memory
On the NIC in question it reads an Avg of 246 KBps TX and 272 KBps RX (rather normal in my opinion)
405GB of disk space with 94GB free
If anyone has any thoughts or info I express my appreciation in advance to any responses.
--
Seth
