I have worked with DL585's for quite a while and never seen this, hopefully someone here has. I have installed VMWare ESX 3.0.1 and cannot get embedded nic #2 to autoneg to 1000Mb/sec. I have troubleshot this in the following ways:
1. Verified cabling is good - visually and by plugging the cable from nic2 into nic1 and verifying that it autonegotiates to gigabit. 2. Took a known good gigabit connection and moved it into nic2 and verified that it negotiated 100 full. 3. Checked and double-checked port configs on Cisco 3750 gigabit switch. Moved cables around on there as well and verfied the ports are not bad, i.e. I can get a gigabit link on the port if I plug the cable into another server or nic. 4. Rebuilt the OS with a fresh unpatched unmodified version of ESX 3.0.1 and it again came up 100 full on nic2. 5. Verified using ethtool that VMWare OS is set to autonegotiate vmnic2. 6. Checked physical nic2 port to ensure no bent pins, or debris in the port.
At this point, it sure looks like a motherboard replacement to me, but just wanted to bounce this off you guys and see what you suggest. Thanks.
I should clarify that these are the NC7782 embedded PCI-X 10/100/1000 nics. Nic1 is successfully negotiating gigabit, Nic2 is autonegotiating 100 Full. I have (2) additional PCI-X nics in slot 6 and 7. They are dual-port and are both successfully negotiating gigabit.
there's a feature on the nc7782 NICs called ethernet@wirespeed. This feature basically does a cable integrity check and will throttle the speed back to 100 if the cable doesn't pass its integrity check.
But, you have swapped in a known good cable from the other NIC port so that means we have a cable that has passed the ethernet@wirespeed integrity check from NIC 1. Maybe a bad PHY....
All the other troubleshooting you have done point to hardware in my opinion.
I have this same issue on the DL580 G4's & 360's. HP Tech support suggested driver updates from manufactureres website as opposed to HP. So if your NIC is Broadcom or Intel - download driver update directly from their site. Ultimately, the motherboard replacement should work.
