Cisco USC C240 M5SX server VMWare network management will not startup

[brian.koomen]

We have a USC C240 M5SX server.  We recently upgraded the server from ESXi 6.5 to 8.0 u3 with the latest patches applied.

The ESXi network management will not startup automatically after we upgraded to version 7.

CISCO support has mentioned that the server is compatible with ESXi version 8.0 u3.   

We upgrade path we took: 

- upgrade to version ESXi 6.7

- upgrade CIMC

- upgrade to version ESXi 7

- upgrade CIMC

- upgrade ESXi 8.0 u3

I just saw that an update for the server was posted 11/27/2024 that updates the NIC drivers/firmware and will be installing in next maint window.

Anybody else experiencing this issue?

[Kirk J]

What NICs were you previously using?

Onboard 1Gb LOMs?
10/25GB MLOM/VIC adapter?

Can you expand on " ESXi network management will not startup automatically" , does it work 'manually'?

What does esxcli network nic list

show?

Kirk...

[brian.koomen]

The NICs are the original ones that came with server.  We have not made any hardware changes to the NICs since installing both physical servers out of the box from CISCO.  All we have done was upgraded VMware ESXi to version 8.0

After the physical server is restarted for any reason, the network management in ESXi has to be manually started for the VMs to start communicating.

esxcli network nic list
Name PCI Device Driver Admin Status Link Status Speed Duplex MAC Address MTU Description
------ ------------ ------ ------------ ----------- ----- ------ ----------------- ---- -----------
vmnic0 0000:01:00.0 ixgben Up Up 1000 Full 00:ee:ab:82:2e:32 1500 Intel(R) Ethernet Controller X550
vmnic1 0000:01:00.1 ixgben Up Up 1000 Full 00:ee:ab:82:2e:33 1500 Intel(R) Ethernet Controller X550
vmnic2 0000:5e:00.0 igbn Up Up 1000 Full b4:96:91:45:de:dc 1500 Intel(R) I350 Gigabit Network Connection
vmnic3 0000:19:00.0 igbn Up Down 0 Half b4:96:91:47:07:6c 1500 Intel(R) I350 Gigabit Network Connection
vmnic4 0000:19:00.1 igbn Up Down 0 Half b4:96:91:47:07:6d 1500 Intel(R) I350 Gigabit Network Connection
vmnic5 0000:19:00.2 igbn Up Down 0 Half b4:96:91:47:07:6e 1500 Intel(R) I350 Gigabit Network Connection
vmnic6 0000:19:00.3 igbn Up Down 0 Half b4:96:91:47:07:6f 1500 Intel(R) I350 Gigabit Network Connection
vmnic7 0000:5e:00.1 igbn Up Down 0 Half b4:96:91:45:de:dd 1500 Intel(R) I350 Gigabit Network Connection
vmnic8 0000:5e:00.2 igbn Up Up 1000 Full b4:96:91:45:de:de 1500 Intel(R) I350 Gigabit Network Connection
vmnic9 0000:5e:00.3 igbn Up Down 0 Half b4:96:91:45:de:df 1500 Intel(R) I350 Gigabit Network Connection

[brian.koomen]

Here is the environment that we have today.

We have one ESXi 172.20.100.202 (8.0.1 build-21813344) Server A

vmnic0 ixgben Up Up Version 1.15.1.0

vmnic2 igbn Up Up Version 1.11.2.0

We have a second ESXi 172.20.100.204 (8.0.3 build-24022510)

vmnic0 ixgben Up Up Version 1.18.2.0

vmnic2 igbn Up Up Version 1.11.2.0

So, We have one server with the solution Cisco is giving us and still when you restart the host we have to manually restart the management network to reach the ESXi.

We have the second server with the version that Broadcom suggested and still need to manually restart the management network to reach the ESXi.