Unable to ping gateway from Service Console

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:
The symptoms are:

• Pinging the gateway IP address from the service console fails
• Pinging other host on the subnet fails
• No network connectivity
• Service Console NIC is incorrect

Environment

VMware ESX 4.0.x
VMware ESX 4.1.x
VMware ESX Server 3.0.x
VMware ESX Server 3.5.x

Resolution

You must have correct VLAN ID configured on Service console.

Note: Make sure you have established VLAN tagging mode. For more information, see VLAN Configuration on Virtual Switch, Physical Switch, and Virtual Machines (1003806).

To configure VLAN ID:

1. Run the following command to verify configured VLAN ID on the Physical Switch (Cisco) to extract CDP information:
   
   esxcfg-info | grep -E "vmnic|vSwitch|CDP|cisco|Vlan"
   
   This command returns VLANs presented from the physical switch connecting to VMNIC
   
   
2. Run the following command on the ESX host to set the VLAN:
   
   esxcfg-vswitch -v 100 vSwitch0
   
   In the above example, the command sets the VLAN ID of 100 on the switch 0.
   
   
3. Run the following command to verify VLAN information:
   
   esxcfg-vswitch -l
   
   
4. Verify NIC linked to vSwitch
   
   esxcfg-nics -l
   esxcfg-vswitch -l
   
   
5. Run the following command to unlink from the NIC that has no connection:
   
   esxcfg-vswitch -U vmnic# vSwitch#
   
   
6. Run the following command to link the NIC to vSwitch:
   
   esxcfg-vswitch -L vmnic# vSwitch#
   
   

If you are not able to get any information via the command in step 6, CDP may not have been enabled. For more information, see Configuring the Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP) with ESX Server (1003885).

Additional Information

You can check and verify the basic Layer 2 connectivity using this command:

arp -a

For related troubleshooting information, see:

• Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP) network information via command line and VirtualCenter on an ESX host (1007069)
• Troubleshooting Service Console connection failures (1007986)Verifying IP connection using the tcpdump command and Troubleshooting network issues via tcpdump
  

Troubleshooting a Service Console/Tech Support Mode connection failure on an ESX/ESXi host