vNIC desired order does not match actual

[Walt Dowdle]

Hello,

I've created a service profile with 2 HBA's and 8 vNICs.  I have set the placement order to "Let system choose placement", but it always gives the HBA 5 and 10 and the vNICs 1,2,3,4,6,7,8,9.

In addition, the vNICs are not discovered by the OS in the order I have them placed.  I have also tried changing the order and put the HBA's as 1,2
(they defaulted to 9 and 10) but it has no effect.

This is important to me because these will be ESXi servers and I want to group vmnic0,1 and vmnic2,3 etc together.  It isn't clean if I get random enumeration and have to try and figure out which vmnics correspond to the vNICs I created in UCS (in my case I named them eth0, eth1, etc).

How can I force the enumeration to the desired order?  This is on a B200M4 with the VIC1340 Adapter.  Firmware version 2.2(5a).

I also followed advice in this thread and this article but it didn't resolve my issue.

[Qiese Dides]

Hi Walt,

On first glance it seems like you are running into the following bug;

https://tools.cisco.com/bugsearch/bug/CSCuu65710/?reffering_site=dumpcr

there is no current work around but I will look into it some more to see if I can get more information for you.

Regards,

Qiese Dides

[Walt Dowdle]

I'm unable to view that bug (it says no permissions to view).

Can you provide any details, or do you know if this is resolved in a newer firmware version?

[Qiese Dides]

Hi Walt,

I do apologize, this bug is Employee Visible only. There hasn't been a fixed release yet. If you contact Cisco TAC they might be able to help you find a work around for your specific situation.

Regards,

[ajaypatil1]

Hi Walt,

If you have the cisco Id that we use to open the case with cisco.You can use that username and password to see this Bug.

[Walt Dowdle]

I was able to find a workaround for this.  I reinstalled ESXi and it is now enumerating the vNICs in the correct order.  I think the problem was that it was initially installed with a service profile that was only configured with 2 vNICs, then later changed to 8.

UCS is still not honoring the placement however.  No matter what I try, it always assigns the HBA’s as 5 and 10 and the vNICs  1,2,3,4,6,7,8,9.  But that doesn't matter to me very much as long as ESXi enumerates the vNIC's in the correct order, which it is now doing.

[ssumichrast]

I posted extensively about this a few months ago: https://supportforums.cisco.com/discussion/12565226/vic-1340-pci-placement-issues

HBAs will always enumerate as the last port on the respective Admin Host Port they're on.  With a VIC 1340 or 1380 you get two Admin Host Ports.  With any other VIC you get one.  This is where the problem starts.

You need to move the vHBAs to be the last placement order on Admin Host Port 2 and then your ESXi order won't get screwed up.  The other option is you have to re-enumerate the vNICs with ESXi if you change the order -- this is due to how ESXi handles mapping PCI IDs to VMNIC entries.  These entries are static in the esx.conf file, meaning it will always map VMNIC# to PCI ID #, regardless of whether PCI ID # changes at the PCI level, which is what happens when you add another vNIC to a server with these Admin Host Port features.

Take a look at my post.  Since doing this we've had no issues and are able to add vNICs without problem.