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Using HP Virtual Connect Flex-10 Technology with VMware ESX and ESXi 3.5 Update 3

Symptoms

The following issues occur when HP Virtual Connect Flex-10 is used with VMware ESX and ESXi 3.5 Update 3:

  • Currently, VMware High Availability (HA) does not function properly with ESXi 3.5 Update 3 (embedded and installable) hosts when the uplinks are connected to Flex-10 NICs.
  • VMotion migration of virtual machines might time out with the default migration-timeout value of 20. Refer to recommendation 2 in the Solution section for the workaround.
  • One physical link from the Flex-10 fabric appears as four Flex-10 NICs (physical NICs) to the VMkernel. Linkstates of all the Flex-10 NICs have to change together so that link-state of individual Flex-10 NIC can be reported correctly. Due to this issue, ESX may not be able to detect failures when a corresponding external uplink is down, even if SmartLink is turned on and the Ethernet Connection Mode is connected to disable failover.
  • ESX might fail when all of the following configurations are specified. Refer to recommendation 4 in the Solution section for the workaround.:
    • The Flex-10 NIC speed is configured below 1 Gbps.
    • The VMkernel is configured with Jumbo frames with MTU size of 9000 bytes.
    • The VMkernel network interface is experiencing heavy load of UDP traffic.

Resolution

  1. To resolve the first issue, apply patch ESX350-200904401-BG patch to the ESX host, and patch ESXe350-20094401-I-SG to the ESXi host.
  2. To resolve the second issue, apply patch ESX350-200903411-BG patch to the ESX host, and patch ESXe350-200903411-I-BG to the ESXi host. The ESX350-200903411-BG and ESXe350-200903411-I-BG patches will be included in ESX and ESXi Update 5.
  3. To resolve the third symptom, perform any of the following workarounds:

    Workaround 1

    Turn off SmartLink, then configure Ethernet Connection Mode to enable failover.

    This allows VirtualConnect to automatically fail over to the another route in the event of external uplink failure without affecting the individual Flex-NIC connected to ESX.

    Workaround 2

    Enable Beacon probing in the vSwitch or port group that has multiple Flex-NICs teamed. Ensure that SmartLink is turned on and Ethernet Connection Mode to disable failover is configured.

    Note: VirtualConnect will be enhanced by HP in a future firmware update. This will allow you to turn on SmartLink and configure Ethernet Connection Mode to disable failover without using Beacon probing.

  4. To ensure that this issue does not occur, avoid any one of the listed configuration conditions.

Additional Information

Flex-10 is a new feature on HP servers such as HP BL495c. It requires a Flex-10 compatible NIC such as the Broadcom 57711, as used in the HP NC532m adapter. For more information on this adapter and Flex-10, see http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/networking/nc532m/index.html.
Note: The preceding link was correct as of June 18, 2009. If you find the link is broken, please provide feedback and a VMware employee will update the link.

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Actions
  • KB Article: 1007982
  • Updated: Aug 14, 2009
  • Products:
    VMware ESX