After an upgrade to ESXi 5.5 from ESXi 5.1, all the networking on the host stopped working, as I had already upgraded other BL490c G7 blades with (seemingly) identical hardware but upon upgrading this one the NICS were detected
but there was no connectivity through the chassis, the flex-10 to the host. All checks on the BladeSystem controllers and the ESXi OS seemed to show all was working fine and connected, there were no errors on the ports within the
BladeSystem.
So I attempted the following:
https://communities.vmware.com/thread/463557?tstart=0
esxcli system module set –enabled=false –module=elxnet
esxcli system module set –enabled=true –module=be2net
Reboot host, after a reboot the networking was operational, it appears this is a driver issue within VMware.
To revert the changes:
esxcli system module set –enabled=false –module=be2net
esxcli system module set –enabled=true –module=elxnet
Reboot host, networking went back to the failed state again. However this driver was working on (seemingly) identical hardware fine. So I checked the firmware version on a working and not working host:
On Host2 (an identical machine to the faulty Host1):
# esxcli network nic get -n vmnic0
Advertised Auto Negotiation: true
Advertised Link Modes: 10000baseT/Full
Auto Negotiation: false
Cable Type:
Current Message Level: -1
Driver Info:
Bus Info: 0000:02:00:0
Driver: elxnet
Firmware Version: 4.2.401.6
Version: 10.5.121.7
Link Detected: true
Link Status: Up
Name: vmnic0
PHYAddress: 0
Pause Autonegotiate: false
Pause RX: true
Pause TX: true
Supported Ports:
Supports Auto Negotiation: false
Supports Pause: true
Supports Wakeon: true
Transceiver:
Wakeon: MagicPacket(tm)
On Host2 we get:
# esxcli network nic get -n vmnic0
Advertised Auto Negotiation: true
Advertised Link Modes: 10000baseT/Full
Auto Negotiation: false
Cable Type:
Current Message Level: -1
Driver Info:
Bus Info: 0000:02:00:0
Driver: elxnet
Firmware Version: 3.102.517.703
Version: 10.5.121.7
Link Detected: true
Link Status: Up
Name: vmnic0
PHYAddress: 0
Pause Autonegotiate: false
Pause RX: true
Pause TX: true
Supported Ports:
Supports Auto Negotiation: false
Supports Pause: true
Supports Wakeon: true
Transceiver:
Wakeon: MagicPacket(tm)
Notice the firmware on the card if different, this should be upgraded to the same version, that way it resolves the issue.
Upgraded the NIC firmware, rebooted the host afterwards the networking operated as expected.
http://h20564.www2.hpe.com/hpsc/swd/public/readIndex?sp4ts.oid=4194638&swLangOid=8&swEnvOid=54