Cisco UCS/VMWare Integration

[snowmizer]

We are implementing a new Cisco UCS system with 4 B-series blades running ESXi 5.0 Update 2. All was good until I tried connecting my new hosts to vCenter (version 5.0 Build 804277). The hosts initially appeared to connect fine. However, after awhile I noticed that they hosts would go to a "not responding" state every 15 minutes or so and then disconnect. They would eventually reconnect but then disconnect again.

Is there some configuration I have to do in either in the Cisco UCS Manager GUI or on vSphere to resolve this issue?

Thanks.

[Robert Burns]

Where is vCenter (External to UCS or on one of the Blades)?

What's your topology including uplink configuration between UCS and northbound and between the UCS and the vCenter.

From the sounds of it you likely have vCenter external to UCS, but please confirm. 

Robert

[snowmizer]

Currently our vCenter server is on an ESXi host (not in UCS) that will be retired once we get the UCS completely in place. We will be migrating vCenter to UCS at that point. Before we can do this we have to get the UCS blades in vCenter and configure each host so that it sees the appropriate storage.

As far as configuration, here's what it looks like:

Fabric interconnect A --------> Catalyst 4506 switch 1 (8 1 GB links in a port channel)

Fabric interconnect B --------> Catalyst 4506 switch 2 (8 1 GB links in a port channel)

ESXi host running vCenter VM is connected to each Catalyst 4506 switch

Thanks.

[snowmizer]

After working with a Cisco tech on this issue this morning we were able to resolve the issue. Basically the person who helped us set this up had me use pin groups to tie my DMZ traffic to a particular port/NIC. This caused issues with the designated broadcast. To resolve we had to use the VLAN manager in UCS and pin the physical NIC to the DMZ vlan and remove the pin groups.