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justin_emerson
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Static MAC assignment broken?

As far as I can tell, I'm doing everything correctly, yet I cannot statically assign a MAC address to a VM in ESXi 4.0 + vCenter 4.0.0 (no patches on either)

I'm trying to assign a MAC address to a VM like 00:50:56:98:37:24.

I have the VM turned off, I edit the NIC settings in the GUI, and I specify the MAC address listed in the box.

I get an error stating "The MAC Address entered is not in the valid range. Valid values are between 00:50:56:00:00:00 and 00:50:56:3f:ff:ff"

Now I'm no math wiz, but I know that the MAC I'm trying to give it is within the range. So what gives? I tried doing the same thing in PowerShell and it complained.

I have resorted to editing the VMX file directly and adding:

ethernet0.addressType = "static"

ethernet0.address = "00:50:56:98:37:24"

That works fine, machine powers up, no errors, and the GUI shows the correct value. So is this a bug in the API? I've tried it thru vCenter and directly connected to the ESX server, both unsuccessfully.

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RDPetruska
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Ummm... you might want to check your math again. 98 is definitely higher than 3F.

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RDPetruska
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Ummm... you might want to check your math again. 98 is definitely higher than 3F.

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Dave_Mishchenko
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You MAC address is outside the range as 98 > 3f (it's not ff:ff:ff). http://kb.vmware.com/kb/507 So the VI client is handling things correctly is that it is limiting you to the specific range. But you're right that you can manually edit outside of the range and it don't get checked. Right now I'm checking a VM with 00:50:57 to see if it'll work without errors.

justin_emerson
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Excuse me while I wipe the egg from my face...

Why doesn't ESX let you manually spec a MAC address that's in the automatically assigned range? We have an app that checks your MAC address, and we're recreating it in vSphere so I need to assign it the same MAC it had before. Guess I have to use this workaround...

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