B200M3 and Vsphere 5.1 - Unable to set NIC speed to 10gb full duplex

[fredrik.careberg]

Hi,

My first post here!

I got 4 B200M3 blades with VIC 1240 and 1280. I have installed vSphere 5.1 on them. The blades are configed with a number of NIC's.

The NIC's get a speed of 20gb full duplex(set on auto negotiation) and i would like to set them to 10gb full duplex. When i try to change it in vSphere i get an error message

"Call "HostNetworkSystem.UpdatePhysicalNicLinkSpeed" for object "networkSystem-1264" on vCenter Server "xxxxxxxxxxxxxx" failed.

Operation failed, diagnostics report: Forcing 1000Mbps or faster may not be supported on this network device, please use auto-negotiation instead"

After some searching it looks like you sometimes have to upgrade vSphere with new drivers to get these things to work?

Anyone got any ideas that can help me?

// Fredrik

[abbharga]

Hi Fredrik,

A few quick questions:

1) What is the driver type and the version on the vnics? here is the HCL for the required driver versions:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/unified_computing/ucs/interoperability/matrix/r_hcl_B_rel2.04.pdf

2) Did you install 5.1 direct or did you upgrade from 5.0? For this blade you need to use the CISCO OEM Custom ESXi image. We still do not have the 5.1 image published, however the 5.0 and 5.0 U1 are avaiable for use. Here is the download location:

https://my.vmware.com/group/vmware/details?downloadGroup=CISCO-ESXI-5.0.0-U1-28AUG2012&productId=229

Thanks!

./Abhinav

[fredrik.careberg]

Hi,

Thanks for the response. I have been away for a week and unable to respond.

1) The driver that is beeing used is:

Driver: enic

Version: 1.4.2.15a

Firmware -Version: 2.0(4a)

It looks like i should use a newer version of the driver according to the document? Where can i Download that?

2) I did a fresh installation of 5.1 on the blades. I can not use 5.0 as we are uning  the blades for View and are in need of the new functions in 5.1. Any  ideas on when the Cisco OEM version for 5.1 will be out? What are the  changes to that release compared to the original vmware 5.1?

Regards

Fredrik