C7000, BL465c G1 x4, Cisco 3020 x5, Brocade 4/24 x2 & VMware

[Steve Pitt]

We have a new C7000 chassis fitted with 6 Cisco 3020 (slots 1,2,5,6 7 & *) and a pair of Brocade 4/24 san switches in slots 3 & 4.

We have 4 BL465c G1 blades fitted with the QLogic Mez card in slot1 and a NC325m Quad NIC card in Mez 2. The OA does not report any issues and the mapping of ports looks correct. The status display is all Green.

I have installed VMware ESX 3.5 on the blade servers with no issues.

The Problem
ESX can see all 6 NIC's and from the Cisco 3020's I can enable/disable the matching NIC interface (intGI0/1 for the first server etc) and ESX can see the port change state from up to down etc.
This only works on the first 4 NIC ports/Cisco 3020's and no matter what I do on the last two Cisco 3020 switches I can't get the ESX server to see the ports become active.

Any suggestion welcome as I've run out of ideas and I can't think I the first person to try this.

Steve
;-)

[Adrian Clint]

Steve, this config is pretty standard so I cant think of even what to try.

Try moving the Cisco's from 5,6 to 7,8
Reseating the nc325m

Or I think its a call to HP.

[Steve Pitt]

Well here is a strange one.
After pulling on of the server blades to verify the Mez cards were installed correctly, and swapping arround two of the Cisco switches everything started working correctly. I don't have a good awnser as to why, but after putting everything back into it's orginal place I now have all 6 nic's that from the Cisco I can enable/disable. this only thin I can think of is that the removal of the blades and switches and power cycle has fixed the problem.
Thanks for the help.
Steve

[The Brit]

Steve,
dont know why, but reseating components and swapping IC Bays often solves these problems on the c7000.

I am not a VMWare person, or even a Windows person, however I do have c7000 enclosures under my care.

All that aside, the main reason I posted this response is because I used to have a buddy called Steve Pitt when I was in the RN (many years ago), so I couldn't resist it.

Good luck.

Dave Baxter.