Network connectivity is lost after upgrading ESXi

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0
• VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0

Issue/Introduction

• ESXi has been upgraded from a major version such as 7.x to another major version like 8.x.
• No other changes have occurred on the network but network impact for some interfaces on the host is observed.
• Network connectivity may seem inconsistent. For example, a vMotion may fail while a ping to the ESXi host management IP succeeds.
• You're using a converged system like VxRail or UCS.
  
  

Cause

vmnic alias association to the PCI and Logical bus mapping can change.

Resolution

1. SSH into the impacted ESXi host and run the following command to display the nic devices:

   esxcli network nic list

2. Run the following command to display the logical and pci bus address mapping to alias listing:

   localcli --plugin-dir /usr/lib/vmware/esxcli/int/ deviceInternal alias list

3. Compare the MAC addresses in the NIC list and the alias list with the converged system manager NIC assignment for the ESXi system.
4. If the order has changed then follow the steps under the heading, "Changing the names assigned by the ESXi host" in this article: How VMware ESXi determines the order in which names are assigned to devices

Additional Information

• UCS BIOS profile setting, "CDN Control"  prevents this behavior  Server Management Guide, Release 4.0
• Dell systems: How to reorder an ESXi host's vmnic using the ESXi command line