ESXi Hosts fails to perform a network failover when the fabric Interconnect fails in a Cisco UCS

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Network failover does not work properly on ESXi host when Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnect (FI) rebooted.
• Network failover works fine on hosts running ESXi 6.x and 7.x
• In the /var/log/vobd.log file, you see entries similar to:
  
  <YYYY-MM-DD>T<time>: [netCorrelator] 88463498397us: [vob.net.pg.uplink.transition.down] Uplink: vmnic0 is down. Affected portgroup: Management Network. 1 upl
  </time>inks up. Failed criteria: 128
  <YYYY-MM-DD>T<time>: [netCorrelator] 88463498456us: [vob.net.vmnic.linkstate.down] vmnic vmnic0 linkstate down
  </time><YYYY-MM-DD>T<time>: [netCorrelator] 88463498493us: [vob.net.pg.uplink.transition.down] Uplink: vmnic2 is down. Affected portgroup: NFS. 1 uplinks up. Failed
  </time> criteria: 128
  <YYYY-MM-DD>T<time>: [netCorrelator] 88463498557us: [vob.net.vmnic.linkstate.down] vmnic vmnic2 linkstate down
  </time><YYYY-MM-DD>T<time>: [netCorrelator] 88463498849us: [vob.net.vmnic.linkstate.down] vmnic vmnic4 linkstate down
  </time><YYYY-MM-DD>T<time>: [netCorrelator] 88463498883us: [vob.net.vmnic.linkstate.down] vmnic vmnic6 linkstate down
  </time><YYYY-MM-DD>T<time>: [netCorrelator] 88464190143us: [esx.problem.net.vmnic.linkstate.down] Physical NIC vmnic4 linkstate is down
  </time><YYYY-MM-DD>T<time>: [netCorrelator] 88464190246us: [esx.problem.net.vmnic.linkstate.down] Physical NIC vmnic6 linkstate is down
  </time><YYYY-MM-DD>T<time>: [netCorrelator] 88465188551us: [esx.problem.net.redundancy.lost] Lost uplink redundancy on virtual switch "vSwitch0". Physical NIC vmnic
  </time>0 is down. Affected port groups: "Management Network"
  <YYYY-MM-DD>T<time>: [netCorrelator] 88465188725us: [esx.problem.net.redundancy.lost] Lost uplink redundancy on virtual switch "vSwitch1-NFS". Physical NIC vmnic2 is down. Affected port groups: "NFS"</time>
  
  Note: This log excerpt is an example. Date, time, and environmental variables may vary depending on your environment.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 7.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.x

Cause

Issue observed with the Cisco to be a bug
Reference : https://bst.cisco.com/quickview/bug/CSCvd52310

 

Resolution

This is a known issue affecting VMware ESXi 6.5 running on nenic 1.0.1.x NIC driver for Cisco.

 

 To resolve this issue, update the nenic driver to 1.0.2.0 version, available at Broadcom Downloads ESXi 6.x and 7.x Drivers & Tools

 Filter the appropriate ESXi version.

 Go to Drivers & Tools tab.

 Search with "nenic".