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zenomorph
Contributor
Contributor
‎07-16-2010 06:55 AM

Issue adding NICs

Hi there

We just encountered a strange issue adding NIC's to our vSphere. Currently we are running HP DL580 G5 with2 onboard NICs and 2 * 4Port Gbit NICs, the NICs are numbered 0, 1 (onboard) + 2, 3, 4, 5 + 6, 7, 8, 9. We just tried to add another 4Port Gbit NIC and by default it should create 4 more NICs 10, 11, 12 13. But once we rebooted the server we found some of the NIC's were disabled and ended up some of the NIC's eg. NIC 2 had become 14 on the vSwitch. Basically the numbering and vSwitches were messed up - but the moment we remove the extra 4 Port Gbit NIC everything went back to normal.

Has anyone encountered this issue before - we tried this on 2 / 3 vSphere servers and the behaviour is the same.

Many thanks.....

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1 Reply
edwardob
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
‎07-17-2010 08:04 PM

Yes, this can happen, the nic ordering is dependant upon mother board bus.

So if you added this card into a slot that has a lower number than the current network card then esx is going to renumber the cards.

You can edit this in the esx.conf file.

http://techies.ncsu.edu/wiki/VMware_NIC_Renumeration

this is a good wiki on it.