NCU created VLAN interfaces not tagging

[Eric W. Bates]

We have new Proliant DL180 G6 servers with NC362i nics. To lessen confusion I disabled the second nic. I used the NCU to create 2 VLAN interfaces (id 20 and 30). Both interfaces appear in the network connections list. I have assigned IP to both the VLAN interfaces (172.25.33.238/24 and 172.25.36.238/24). There is no IP on the parent interface. Only one of the VLAN has a default route configured (172.25.33.1).

The proliant is cabled to a cisco 2950 whose port is configured:

interface FastEthernet0/10
switchport trunk allowed vlan 1,20,30,40,50,60,70,80
switchport mode trunk
no cdp enable
spanning-tree portfast

The native VLAN for the switch is cisco's default of 1.

I have started 2 continuous pings. Each ping is to one of the respective VLAN networks. I have installed an ethernet tap on the cable and am using tcpdump to watch the traffic from a third machien. All traffic from the cisco is tagged with various VLAN id. None of the traffic, at all, from the proliant is tagged; so it ultimately gets the native tag once it leaves the cisco on its merry way.

I figure we're missing something very obvious.

I have played games with the native VLAN on the cisco. Obviously this allows whichever VLAN I pick as the native to work; but since everything is leaving the proliant untagged it all ends up on one VLAN or the other.

I have created a third VLAN with id 1 on the proliant so that it would match the cisco; but that's sort of pointless since nothing is leaving the cisco untagged. Its existence has no noticeable effect on the other VLAN.

I was stunned and amazed to learn that Windoze doesn't actually handle VLAN. We've considered throwing an Intel nic on the machine just to see whether Intel's driver behaves any differently; but we'll need a riser card for that test.

Thanks for your time.

[Lmm_1]

Eric,
Whats the NCU version, can you provide the server config?
from command prompt type hpnetsvy> filename.txt

rgds
Lmm

[Eric W. Bates]

We have installed 9.65.0.0 of the NCU.

I dumped it twice. Once with an ether channel configured (a team) and once without. This first attachment is the team version.

[Eric W. Bates]

This is the dump with only VLANs (no team).

[Eric W. Bates]

Oh... forgot to mention. this is all 64 bit so we can address all the memory on this machine.

[Lmm_1]

I´ll give it a try on the lab tomorrow. I´ll let you know.

[Irving Gomez]

I am having the same issue after I upgraded to the 9.65 version of the NCU.

[Lmm_1]

I havent test it yet, I´ll try to get some time next week. I´ll recommend to open a ticket with HP Support.

[Eric W. Bates]

We did open a support ticket. Sadly unimpressive. They recommended rev'ing back the version of the NCU. I've tried 9.60.0.0 and 9.50.0.0 (both failed). I also tried rev'ing back the version of the NIC driver. This was complicated by the fact that the Intel N1Q has disappeared from driver links on the DL180 support page for 2003 64bit. I used the driver on the distribution CD. but that didn't help either.

I think we have to write this off as a bad effort. We're going to just use quad port NIC instead. Expensive and crude. Probably should just run FreeBSD instead...

[Eric W. Bates]

For the Google search: problem solved.

We uninstalled the HP NCU and the HP drivers and replaced them with the equivalent Intel drivers (available from the Intel download site) and everything works perfectly.

After HP tech support told us to downgrade the version of the NCU again to one which doesn't list our hardware as supported, we added a riser card and an Intel Pro/1000 dual NIC. Lo and behold, the driver we installed for that card recognized the on-board NIC. The Intel software supports LACP and VLAN's beautifully.