Virtual ESA c100v on VMware cloud deployment

Eric Cole · ‎09-08-2014

Hello,

I am testing a c100v virtual ESA appliance with the latest image from the Cisco site on a cloud VMWare virtual environment. I have it configured with 2 vCPU's, 6GB RAM, 200GB HD, and 1 nic.

I initially setup the image on my internal testing ESXi server. This worked just fine. I had 3 nics configured in VMware but only 1 configured in the VM.

I shutdown the VM, removed the nics, exported the OVA and imported it into this cloud environment. The cloud environment offers just a single nic to a VM.

I logged onto the console access and changed the interface config for the management interface to have the new IP/Subnet/GW.

Performing a netstat on all interfaces just shows:

-----------

Name MTU Network Address Ipkts Ierrs Idrop Ibytes

0pkts 0errs 0byts Coll Drop

---------------

I attempted to start a packet capture on all interfaces. It returned the following:

"Failed to start packet capture: Interface Error".

This occurs no matter which interface I select.

If I attempt to run a "version" it throws several errors and ends in:

"ValueError: interface not found"

Any thoughts on what to check next or how to check?

Thanks,

Eric

Ken Stieers · ‎09-12-2014

The config/OS are expecting to find 3 interfaces... they don't have to be connected to a vSwitch, but they have to be there. I'm pretty sure you're in an unsupported config.

Eric Cole · ‎09-12-2014

Well, we finally figured it out. (Thank you to a few people on #cisco on Freenode IRC for pointing me in the right direction)

The cloud VM provider only creates vmnetx3 nics by default. We had to request e1000 nics be assigned to the VM. Once they changed the config and powered up the VM the c100v saw the network correctly and routes traffic correctly now too. I was also able to test this on my test ESXi server. The virtual ESA VM's only accept e1000 nics, not vmnetx3.

kstieers1 - We are able to have the c100v work correctly with just a single nic. As long as I don't attempt to configure the other 2 nics via the CLI or web then I should be just fine. Yes, it is an unsupported config. I'm thinking we'll go down to the c000v image later in testing as that has fewer nics.