Mezzanine network ports not displayed in Vmware ESX

[lmagnocavallo]

I just installed the latest available release of Vmware ESX on one of our blades (ProLiant BL460c G1 with 2xquad Xeon). Everything is fine, except the ESX Manager is able to see only the two onboard network interfaces, and it does not see the four on the mezzanine card (NC364m Quad Port 1Gb NIC for c-Class BladeSystem). Unfortunately, our network guys configure all our blades so that the two builtin ports are on the production networks, so I have to use one of the mezzanine ports for management. Any way to let the ESX Manager see those ports? Thanks! Ludo

[neilburton]

Unfortuantely the NC364m isn't listed in ESX IO compatibility list and the NICs aren't recognised. I learned this the hard way myself recently.

[lmagnocavallo]

Neil, thanks for your reply. I suspected it was a compatibility problem. A pity, as it means we cannot install ESX on any of our blades.

[neilburton]

Can you get your hands on some Broadcom mez cards instead? The NC325m is quad-port and is on the VMware IO list. Also - just to check - do you have the required number of interconnect modules (3 pairs) to access all 6 NICs on a half height blade?

[neilburton]

http://h71028.www7.hp.com/ERC/downloads/4AA1-2528ENW.pdf That doc clearly shows which NIC cards are supported by ESX.