Help with Cisco UCS C220 M5L with VIC 1457 -- VMware questions.

[michael.donoghue]

I have VMware ESXi 6.5 u3 installed on UCS C220 M5L with a quad-port VIC 1457 adapter and can not seem to get the VMware management working. 

Each of the four ports go to different switches. We are not looking to use LACP and Port Channel is disabled within CIMC.

I am trying to use PORT-2 and PORT-3 of this adapter for management.

The switchport configurations for PORT-2 and PORT-3 are Access mode with a default VLAN of 1. I cannot for the life of me get the management address to work and any help is greatly appreciated.

See photos for current settings. I've seen some documents where physical ports 1 and 2 should go to the same switch and 3 and 4 should go to the same switch, but I believe that is only if Port Channel is enabled on the card and we are not using a port channel. 

Thanks in advance!

Michael

[Wes Austin · Accepted solution]

This will depend on what your switch upstream is configured for. If it is not Nexus, it may have issues with CIMC in access mode on those ports. Can you attempt to tag the VLAN at ESXi side and then trunk the CIMC and upstream switch to allow communication?

This document should provide some guidance:

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/servers-unified-computing/ucs-c-series-rack-servers/117637-technote-UCS-00.html 

[michael.donoghue]

Thanks for the quick response, Wes! These are connected to a Nexus switch so not really sure why access mode wasn't working. Setting the ports to trunk mode worked without issue.

Thanks!

Mike