HPSIM/Insight Agents and disabled NIC Ports in ESX

[Rich-E]

Hi,

I've added my ESX Hosts to my HP SIM server, and having disabled the usused NIC ports using the 'ifconfig vmnic(x) down' command, am still getting reports of the ports in PCI NIC cards being marked as failed. This is also still being reports after smnpd and hpasm service restarts.

As only one of the 2 ports in the PCI NIC card is unused, I can't disable or remove the whole card by whatever means.

Have scoured the forums but am yet to find an answer! The ESX command worked fine on the unused onboard NIC ports, but now I'm stumped!

Any ideas?

Cheers,

Richard

[Annette Jones_2]

Richard,

If you find a way around this then please post, because the only way I could get this to work was to use loopback cables.

Regards
Annette

[Olivier Masse]

I've had the same problem on Integrity servers. I didn't find a way to fix this, except removing the unused NICs... not an acceptable solution when you have quad cards with two unused ports.

The only workaround I found was plugging RJ45 loopback plugs in the unused ports. These devices seem to be a dying breed, I couldn't find any online at a reasonable price, so I ordered RJ45 plugs and used a crimper to assemble homemade loopbacks. It's not hard to do, but I have to admit that having to rely on a workaround like this one sucks big time.

Good luck

[Rob Buxton]

I don't know a way of doing it from ESX.
You could disable the NIC Agents, edit the /opt/compaq/cma.conf file and exclude the cmanicd agent. But that would disable all NIC reporting.

You could use loopback connectors to fool ESX.

Or you could actually use the additional NICs. Having multiple NICs gives a bit more resilience. Obviously need port capacity on your switches. But we make full use of the 6 ports available on our ESX Hosts.

[Rich-E]

Thanks for the replies so far.

Unused onboard NICs were sorted with the "ifconfig vmnic(#) down" command, with the same command added to the /etc/rc.local file to ensure the condition is kept on reboot, however I haven't had any luck with the PCI cards.

Attempting to solve this on the fly without proper downtime on the servers doesn't help at all, but working in a Dev environment you have to make do when the servers are in use a lot of the time. I've had a nose through the esx.conf file and found the port I want disabled but have a feeling that any work I do removing reference to the card will be undone at the next reboot when ESX will redetect the port - can anyone confirm this though?

I've got some loopback RJ45s but they don't seem to be working for the PCI card ports (if anyone has this working, can they confirm if they ran any commands or configured anything in ESX first prior to plugging in the loopback?), NIC agents still reporting a failed port. Don't really want to disable the NIC agents altogether because one reason I set up SIM was to monitor network loss on servers.

Some of the servers do need a reconfig/rebuild, it's just frustrating that having set up the SIM server I can't resolve all outstanding issues straight away!

Cheers,

Richard

[Olivier Masse]

If your loopbacks don't work, try forcing the ports to 100 Full Duplex. Gigabit-enabled loopbacks seem to require additionnal wiring that some older loopbacks might not have, I have not been able to make mine work at gigabit.

[sandeep_raman]

Hi,

This behavior is noticed only with the PCI NIC. HP SIM or the HP Insight Management Agents do not have a role in this but with the OS Vmware ESX.

Please engage the OS Vendor

Cheers,
SRH

[Rich-E]

Aha. A combination of things got the loopbacks working - the suggestion of setting the GB cards to 100/Full was what got me there in the end.

esxcfg-nics -s 100 -d full vmnic(x) did the job nicely.

Unfortunatly there isn't a straight forward solution under ESX other than the ifconfig vmnic(x) down for onboard NICs, the PCI NIC solution still eludes me. Lucky I had those loopbacks.

Points awarded though, for helping me get there in the end, naturally. Cheers!