Hi!
In my company we have 3 ESXi hosts running with a vCenter 6.7 that were configured some time ago. We found out that the configuration is not as "best practise" with the iSCSI connection (separate management and storage traffic). Therefore we wanted to get this right.
To test the new best practise version we only changed the config on one host. The old config was using one vmnic, one vmk and one vSwitch for management and iSCSI storage traffic.
Now we have the following configuration:
vmnic0 -> vmk0 (10.176.20.22, Services: Management) -> vSwitch0
vmnic1 -> vmk1 (10.176.21.122, Services: none checked!) -> vSwitch1
vCenter IP 10.176.21.9
So two physical uplinks with different vmk's and also different vSwitches. The network of vmk0 and vmk1 are also different ones (vmk0 - 10.176.20.0/24, vmk1 - 10.176.21.0/24). vmk1 is bond to a newly created port group, called iSCSI-0.
I already configured the Software iSCSI Adapter to use this new vmk and it is working fine. The problem we now have is that the ESXi host is stated as "disconnected" in vCenter. When I try to connect it, it fails. I can ping the host from the vCenter without issues. I tried to connect the host with hostname and also IP.
But now comes the odd part: when I try to add the host in vCenter with the IP address of the new vmk1 it gets found instantly.
When I try to add just any wrong address I get an instant error message (cannot contact host xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx). So it seems like the host is reachable from vCenter and as I said I can ping it from there.
I already restarted the management network on the host, restarted the host itself, checked the vCenter licensing just in case.
I really appreciate any ideas how to get rid of this problem. I am stuck at the moment. It seems that vmk1 gets recognized as the management interface instead of vmk0, though I only set the management service checkbox on vmk0.
Some details from the current configuration:
[root@esxi-2:~] esxcli network ip interface ipv4 get
Name IPv4 Address IPv4 Netmask IPv4 Broadcast Address Type Gateway DHCP DNS
---- ------------- ------------- -------------- ------------ ----------- --------
vmk1 10.176.21.122 255.255.255.0 10.176.21.255 STATIC 0.0.0.0 false
vmk0 10.176.20.22 255.255.255.0 10.176.20.255 STATIC 10.176.20.1 false
[root@esxi-2:~] esxcli network ip route ipv4 list
Network Netmask Gateway Interface Source
----------- ------------- ----------- --------- ------
default 0.0.0.0 10.176.20.1 vmk0 MANUAL
10.176.20.0 255.255.255.0 0.0.0.0 vmk0 MANUAL
10.176.21.0 255.255.255.0 0.0.0.0 vmk1 MANUAL
[root@esxi-2:~] esxcli network vswitch standard list
vSwitch0
Name: vSwitch0
Class: cswitch
Num Ports: 7936
Used Ports: 17
Configured Ports: 128
MTU: 1500
CDP Status: listen
Beacon Enabled: false
Beacon Interval: 1
Beacon Threshold: 3
Beacon Required By:
Uplinks: vmnic0
Portgroups: VM Network, LAN_SRV, Management Network
vSwitch1
Name: vSwitch1
Class: cswitch
Num Ports: 7936
Used Ports: 4
Configured Ports: 1024
MTU: 1500
CDP Status: listen
Beacon Enabled: false
Beacon Interval: 1
Beacon Threshold: 3
Beacon Required By:
Uplinks: vmnic1
Portgroups: iSCSI-0
[root@esxi-2:~] esxcli network ip interface list
vmk1
Name: vmk1
MAC Address: 00:50:56:6f:91:62
Enabled: true
Portset: vSwitch1
Portgroup: iSCSI-0
Netstack Instance: defaultTcpipStack
VDS Name: N/A
VDS UUID: N/A
VDS Port: N/A
VDS Connection: -1
Opaque Network ID: N/A
Opaque Network Type: N/A
External ID: N/A
MTU: 1500
TSO MSS: 65535
RXDispQueue Size: 1
Port ID: 50331652
vmk0
Name: vmk0
MAC Address: ac:1f:6b:45:47:c8
Enabled: true
Portset: vSwitch0
Portgroup: Management Network
Netstack Instance: defaultTcpipStack
VDS Name: N/A
VDS UUID: N/A
VDS Port: N/A
VDS Connection: -1
Opaque Network ID: N/A
Opaque Network Type: N/A
External ID: N/A
MTU: 1500
TSO MSS: 65535
RXDispQueue Size: 1
Port ID: 33554437
Thank you!
Marius