vmware tools summary displays wrong ip address

[Peter_Berger]

i have a bunch of multi-homed virtual machines with the latest vmware tools installed & running. The "summary" tab says that vmware tools are "ok" but in the "ip address" area it displays the ip address of the 2nd nic (backup LAN) instead of the primary NIC (management LAN).

the question I have is: how do I configure the vmware tools to only work on, query, use the 1st NIC in the machine and display that IP.

I'm sure burued deep down in the vmware tools config lies the answer -- i just don't know where. we have both linux and windows-based VM's so I'd need the location for both OS'es.

2nd question. if this primary NIC is down, is there an option for vmware tools to use this 2nd NIC to report back to Virtual Infrastructure?

much thanks...

[EGRAdmin]

In your guest OS ; under network, properties, advanced you can change the NIC order.

This is what's causing your VM to report your backup NIC.

Change it to secondary and it will report the correct IP.

I beleive you need a guest OS reboot for the change to take effect.

[Peter_Berger]

In my guest OS I changed the NIC binding order from BACKUP-LAN being first, to the PRODUCTION-LAN being first and BACKUP-LAN being listed second. I rebooted, waited a while, looked back in ESX Virtual Infrastructure Client and VMWare Tools is still displaying the IP Address of the 2nd (BACKUP-LAN) interface. I know this doesn't really affect anything, but it would be nice to have VMWare Tools display all IP addresses for multi-homed machines, and/or just the primary NIC.

thanks for the helpful tip, but so far no luck...

[Rob_Bohmann1]

I've has seen this in the past on 3.0.1 It is just a display issue, thought it is very annoying. I removed and readded nics and sometimes that would resolve it and sometimes not. Changing the enumeration of the nics in the guest did not always fix it. I am curious though if this is happening on 3.0.1 or a 3.0.2 or something else for you.

[Peter_Berger]

v3.0.2.52542

You're query about the version number prompted me to take a look at all my VM's. It's weird, but all ESX hosts are on the same version above, "but" only VM's running on a single/particular ESX host in the cluster is showing these "wrong" IP addresses in VMWare Tools. I have a couple of VM's showing this IP issue.

Perhaps it's something goofy with that particular ESX host? I don't know if a "service mgmgt-vmware restart" and a VIC disconnect/re-connect will do the trick? Or perhaps an ESX host reboot?. Or if there's another internal VMWare service that VMWare Tools uses on the ESX host that I can check/restart?

hmmm.....

[Rob_Bohmann1]

I was never able to resolve it for some of my guests, other priorities, I just learned to live with it. For us, it was not a big deal, just an annoyance as we had 1 prod net and 1 backup net.

I wish I had more suggestions but I don't. Rebooting and restarting hostd/vpxa did not resolve anything for me. If you ever figure this out, please post as I am curious why it does that.

One suggestion, (its been 6+months and a different shop so I do not recall if I checked this) but if you check the vmx file is the #1 nic reflecting what you see in the VC gui of the vm properties?

To me it seems to be that it is a display issue and probably something in the VC database than anything else, but that is just a hunch.

[vp1007]

I'm bringing this back to the top because we have the same issue on all our ESX boxes. At first it seems to be superficial. However, I run into problems when doing vcbmounter backups with the hostname. This is due to DNS not matching up with the IP address reported by VMware tools.

Also, in our case, we have a single nic with multiple IP addresses assigned. It is easily recreatable (on our ESX boxes) by setting up a test machine with one nic, give it 2 ip addresses. We are running ESX 3.0.2 and 3.0.1. Issue is recreateable on both versions.

[esiebert7625]

This was a quirk in 3.0.x that was resolved in 3.5 which can now display multiple IP addresses on the summary display. See the below thread...

VM Summary Page General showing other NIC IP Address - http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=84784

Eric Siebert

VMware Communities User Moderator

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[vp1007]

I need a workaround for 3.0.1 and 3.0.2. I cannot upgrade our 7 ESX systems to 3.5 right now.

In my particular case, the NIC has 2 ip addresses assigned:

192.168.1.210 and 192.168.1.209

The primary IP address is 192.168.1.210. (This is the IP in DNS)

VMware tools decides to use 192.168.1.209.

When I try to use vcbmounter with the hostname of this machine, it looks for a VM with an IP of 192.168.1.210. As far as ESX is concerned, it doesn't exist because that IP is not registered by vmware tools.

[Trammell]

Hate to drag this back from 2007 but I am having this issue on vsphere 6.7 & VMware ESXi, 6.0.0, 6856897. Two network cards and binding order is correct.

Host summary is showing the Failover Cluster Virtual Adapter as the primary address. Is there a way to correct this?