ESX 3.5 Managment Processor Health Status

[MrMike_2]

I have some VMware ESX 3.5 servers and in SIM the Management Processors always show as having a Major Health Status issue. When I log into the iLO device everything looks fine with nothing in the integrated logs. I have worked with SIM support who was not able to offer a explanation or a solution.

I have deleted and re-added the devices and anything else I can think of.

Any ideas?

[Mikey C]

what does the SHM show under management processors?

[MrMike_2]

the MP column of the esx server shows Major. and the HS column of the corresponding iLO also show Major.

[Anonymous]

Just wanted to say I have experienced this problem too - and the status does tend to flutter a bit. I'm putting it down to hiccups in hardware polling, but if someone does have an answer I think we all would love to hear it :)

[MrMike_2]

We are now thinking that it may be because 2 ports on the Quad Port Gigabit Adapter on the server are not being used.

The Health status of the server is ! Major and I think it may be bleeding into the Management Processor Health Status.

Trying to figure out how to disable the ports without disabling the whole NIC.

[WDSGlobal Group MIS]

I've just had the same problem when adding some ESX 3.5 Hosts on BL460's into a 5.3 SP1 SIM. The Major Health Status warning was caused by two of the four NIC's being unconnected. The iLO Health Status simply mirrors that of the blade server, which is why it also shows Major.

To resolve the Health warning I simply disabled the two unused NIC's in the ESX console.

ifconfig vmnic4 down
ifconfig vmnic5 down

We have this problem because the fibre HBA's and 4-port NIC boards are "the wrong way round" so two of the four NIC ports are unusable due to the port mapping. This solved the problem and the Health Status, on the ESX Host blade server and the iLO are both green.

Hope that helps,

Clive

[MrMike_2]

Clive we able to successfully disabled the two unused NIC's in the ESX console as you described but find that if the system is rebooted they again become enabled. Do you know of any way around that?


Thanks for the feedback!

Mike

[WDSGlobal Group MIS]

You can add the two "ifconfig ... down" commands to /etc/rc.local. Then they will run at boot-time. I just remembered I had to do this still after rebooting on of our ESX hosts after patching and the hardware alerts popped back up again.