Running ESXi 5.5 on a Cisco C240 M3 after upgrading the BIOS fails with a host disconnect

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:
You have upgraded the BIOS to version CIMC 2.0 on a Cisco C240 M3 with ESXi 5.5 or later installed and experience these symptoms:

• the host is disconnected
• the NIC enumeration of the host has changed.
• investigation reveals the management network NIC has changed

Cause

Update to CIMC 2.0 firmware causes ESX 5.5 to re-enumerate the host NICs. This can cause the management network to be connected to an incorrect NIC.

Resolution

This is a known issue affecting ESXi 5.5 and later on Cisco C240 M3 hosts with BIOS firmware version CIMC 2.0.

Currently, there is no resolution.

To work around this issue:

1. Enable Consistent Device Naming (CDN) prior to VMware Installation:
   This will shift the LOM port enumeration to occur prior to other PCI devices. This token value is available in the following BIOS menu: Advanced -> LOM and PCIe Slots Configuration -> CDN Support for LOM. This setting can be updated from the F2 BIOS Menu or from the IMC through the WebUI, CLI or XML API.
    
2. Install Server on IMC 1.X and update firmware:
   Since this impacts only installations where the firmware version is 2.0, customers who install their environment on a server running 1.X firmware and update firmware after VMware is installed will see their initial NIC enumeration persist.
    
3. Install VMware 5.1 release and then upgrade to VMware 5.5:
   Since this impacts only VMware 5.5 installations, customers who install an earlier release of VMware and upgrade to their environment to VMware 5.5 will see their initial NIC enumeration persist.

 

Additional Information

This behavior is only present on C240 M3 servers running CIMC 2.0 firmware.

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