VMware Cloud Community
paulmack
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
Jump to solution

Intel Gigabit VT Quad Port Server Adapter and ESX 3.0.2 Update 1

Hi,

We've just got 2 Dell 2950's with one of these in each and two onboard broadcoms. I installed 3.0.2 Update 1 and the Intel VT quad card wasn't detected. Show'd up in lspci as unknown device. After a quick search I found the driver update to install the igb driver for this card. See this link

Cool I thought. Installed the update the nics appeared and I carried on configuring. When I started testing the hosts by vmotioning a test vm onto them the network connectivity from the VM dropped. It says it's connected but I get no ping responses. If I vmotion the vm back to one of my other esx hosts the ping responses come back.

I've tried everything I can think of including removing one of the uplink pNics from the vSwitch so it's only going through one of our cisco switches rather than the two for redundancy, setting the speed and duplex settings to everything possible on both the switch and the esx host. I've even swapped the card out for a older dual intel card I had lying around to verify it's a problem with this particular quad card! Worked perfectly withe the older dual card.

the SC has been configured with two pNic's. One from the onboard broadcom and one from the quad intel card. Works perfectly running on the intel card alone! Just can't any VM traffic to work on the quad intel card!

Anyone else got any ideas or can suggest something to try?

Cheers

Paul

Reply
0 Kudos
1 Solution

Accepted Solutions
inewby
Contributor
Contributor
Jump to solution

VMware Support have just got back to me and confirmed that there is a known issue with Intel VT Quad Port Adapter when configured to work with Trunk ports.

They tell me engineering are working on it

View solution in original post

Reply
0 Kudos
37 Replies
doubleH
Expert
Expert
Jump to solution

it's recommended that you use the same type of nics in a team (bond). can you try changing your SC nic config so that they are both using the same type of nic. speed duplex (if running gig) should be auto on the switch ports and auto on the esx hosts. are you using multiple nics for vMotion?

If you found this or any other post helpful please consider the use of the Helpfull/Correct buttons to award points

If you found this or any other post helpful please consider the use of the Helpfull/Correct buttons to award points
Reply
0 Kudos
paulmack
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
Jump to solution

I've removed intel from the SC bond to just leave the one Broadcom and have got only one of the intel's uplinking the vSwitch the VM is on. Both switchport and ESX hosts are configured to autonegotiate. Still no joy. Vmotion is sharing the SC nic. The networking config for these hosts is 2 nics for SC and Vmotion, 2 nics for internal vSwitch and 2 nics for DMZ vSwitch.

Cheers

Paul

Reply
0 Kudos
jhanekom
Virtuoso
Virtuoso
Jump to solution

The "recommendation" about using cards of the same manufacturer in a vSwitch seems to be a bit of an urban legend.

The same question (mixing card types in a vSwitch) was asked of the developer of the ESX networking code earlier this year at TSX and he categorically stated that it makes absolutely no difference at all.

The quad-port issue is interesting, though. Wasn't this a problem in an earlier release? Maybe it's a regression bug.

Reply
0 Kudos
doubleH
Expert
Expert
Jump to solution

thanks for pointing the "myth" out.

If you found this or any other post helpful please consider the use of the Helpfull/Correct buttons to award points

If you found this or any other post helpful please consider the use of the Helpfull/Correct buttons to award points
Reply
0 Kudos
paulmack
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
Jump to solution

I do remember a similar issue around the esx 3.0.0 era. I think it was with intel nic cards also but can't be sure. Has anyone successfully used these nics to pass VM traffic? Like I said it work ok in the SC.

Paul

Reply
0 Kudos
George_B
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
Jump to solution

Is this the same as the NP NC364T PCIe Quad port gigabit adapter ?

Reply
0 Kudos
reubensi
Contributor
Contributor
Jump to solution

I have an extremely similar problem, and since I am new to ESX, I have spent a long time (over a week) troubleshooting this because I thought I was doing something wrong. I have what I believe to be the same card (no markings, but I have pictures), that dell sold me knowing it was going to an ESX server, though it is installed in a 1950 instead of a 2950. I am going to open a case with Dell monday morning and will repost what their recommendation is. I was not happy with needing to use the IGB boot cd in order to install ESX anyways, just because it's not clean for brand new hardware.

My symptoms are/were:

No traffic passed from guests to vlan gateway's on switch.

Troubleshooting:

When attempting to nic team using ip hash load balancing policy to a cisco switch trunk, I never see any traffic pass to the switch (I've setup quite a few trunks in the past and haven't had any issues before). Since I had not used the VI Client before, I figured that there were errors in setting up the vswitches via the GUI (old linux habit), so I learned how to setup the whole network config using the command line. Great knowledge for later, but time consuming now. Eventually I attempted the team using the onboard broadcom nics, and the same trunk settings on the switch. Traffic passed. Just to test my theory I setup another pair of trunk ports on the switch and attached them to two of the intel nics. Again no traffic. I switched the cables between the trunk ports just to make sure that there was not a configuration error in my cisco config, and again the intel nics would not pass traffic. During all of this I was watching traffic on a monitor port on the cisco switch. I ran an "esxcfg-vswitch -l" to verify configuration, and doublechecked the loadbalancing policy only to find that they were identical.

I also have another problem, though I am unsure whether it is related or not, or even if this VMWare Converter operation is supported:

I lose connectivity to the host on it's service port IP Address sometimes indefinately, sometimes for a few minutes, when trying to run a VMWare Converter (inside a Windows 2003 standard VM running on the host) to copy a VM from the Host to an ISCSI SAN Volume. (I know I can just copy it and import it, but I thought it would be a good test to start to use the VMWare Converter.) At this point, I am unsure if this is related or if I have an error in my configuration somewhere (no doubt with the VMKernel (ISCSI) and Service Console port). I have also lost connectivity a few times when running large copy operations, though enabling Jumbo frames seemed to help this a little.

Reply
0 Kudos
inewby
Contributor
Contributor
Jump to solution

I have the same problem here, Dell 2950 with Intel VT Quad Port NIC not working with ESX 3.02 update 1.

Anyone heard anything from Dell or VMware?

Reply
0 Kudos
paulmack
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
Jump to solution

Unfortunately my company has let our support subsription lapse. :smileyangry:

Until that's sorted I can't log a call with VMware. In the meantime I've used 2 of the intel cards for sc/vmotion and the onboard broadcoms as uplinks for the 2 vSwitches. I think this is most likely a driver issue that VMware need to know about so if anyone else can get it logged then please do. I don't want to get Dell to swap the cards because these are the new I/OAT models. I know VMware aren't making use of that yet but I bet it won't be long!

Cheers

Paul

Reply
0 Kudos
reubensi
Contributor
Contributor
Jump to solution

I now have a case open with Dell tech support, and we haven't reached a resolution yet, but I was curious to see what the device ID is for your particular NIC's?

From the console as root, run: nano /proc/pci

This will read the pci device information that is being reported back to ESX. Scroll Down till you see a line similar to the following:

Ethernet controller: PCI device 8086:10d6 (Intel Corp.) (rev2).

If you could post back what your nic's come back with for a device id (highlighted in red), this may be helpful to verify that we all have the same nic.

Thanks,

inewby
Contributor
Contributor
Jump to solution

Yup, they are "8086:10d6 (Intel Corp.) (rev 2)."

I have also placed a call with Dell, and I just submitted a SR to VMware.

I'll keep ya posted.

paulmack
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
Jump to solution

Yep. Same card. Ethernet controller: PCI device 8086:10d6 (Intel Corp.) (rev2). Please let me know the outcome of your SR's.

Cheers

Paul

Reply
0 Kudos
inewby
Contributor
Contributor
Jump to solution

I have just plugged the 4 port NIC into a Windows 2003 SP2 server, it recognised it as an Intel(R) Gigabit VT Quad Port Server Adapter, no extra drive needed.

I have configured an IP address and plugged it in to the same port on the Cisco switch and it works a treat, looking like a VMware Driver issue more and more.

I'll let you know what VMware support says when they get back to me.

Reply
0 Kudos
admin
Immortal
Immortal
Jump to solution

For those that are having connectivity issues with the Intel VT card (igb driver).... are you setup with VLAN trunks to these cards? If so can you try setting the interface on the switch to an access port instead, just as a test?

And please do file an SR with us if you haven't already so we are aware of the issue.

Thanks,

-Kris

Reply
0 Kudos
reubensi
Contributor
Contributor
Jump to solution

I have already tested this, and it appears to work fine, though I didn't do any performance testing, as I am only setting up a test environment at this point. I was able to pass traffic, and it didn't seem as though I had any connectivity issues, or throughput issues. I was unable however to trunk the data at all. I would file an SR, but I am only using the evaluation license at this point (great way to start it out...). We were however planning on purchasing Virtual Infrastructure in the next couple of months assuming this evaluation goes well, and will need to get this resolved quickly so that we can continue our testing and evaluation. At this point our testing is on hold due to this issue.

Regards.

Reply
0 Kudos
samiku
Contributor
Contributor
Jump to solution

I have the same problem with the VT cards. Vlan trunks are not working, access mode works fine and the onboard nics (with broadcom chip) work as trunk with the exactly same configuration.

i have had an case open for more than a month with vmware, hopefully the problem get resolved soon...

Reply
0 Kudos
Schorschi
Expert
Expert
Jump to solution

We saw this issue with the PT qual-ports, where ESX 3.0.0 did not see the cards but 3.0.1 did after we teaked the devicemap file. For us, it was not an issue with the driver, only that the devicemap did not list the correct information. VMware gave us the fix, as noted above, until an update was released that fixed the issue. However, we did not go live with the quad nics for 2 reasons, 1) there (were) every expensive at the time, and we had available slots, 2) we found that we could (at the time) flood the PCI bus with only minor effort. Of course with faster FSB and more PCI bridging, it should be harder to flood the PCI bus today.

Reply
0 Kudos
inewby
Contributor
Contributor
Jump to solution

VMware Support have just got back to me and confirmed that there is a known issue with Intel VT Quad Port Adapter when configured to work with Trunk ports.

They tell me engineering are working on it

Reply
0 Kudos
paulmack
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
Jump to solution

Thanks all. Hope they get a solution soon. At the moment my 2 vSwitches have no nic and switchport redundancy due to this.

Happy christmas.

Paul

Reply
0 Kudos