LLDP Information Shown by ESXI

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• LLDP on Cisco APIC switch is used 
• LLDP is enabled on DVS with Operation set to Both
• Physical switch UI displays card model and MAC address only on the LLDP Neighbor
  • 
• Additional information (such as ESXi name and interface) are not displayed on the physical switch UI

Environment

ESXi 8.0

Cause

This is an expected behavior from the ESXi side.

To confirm that the correct information is being sent (interface name, MAC address, DVS name, ESXi name), perform packet capture as below:

#pktcap-uw --uplink vmnicX --dir 1 --ethtype 0x88cc -o - |tcpdump-uw -vvv -ner - 

Example output (in the example below the capture is done on vmnic0):

[root@esx-example:~] pktcap-uw --uplink vmnic0 --dir 1 --ethtype 0x88cc -o - |tcpdump-uw -vvv -ner -
The name of the uplink is vmnic0.
The session filter Ethernet type is 0x88cc.
pktcap: The output file is -.
pktcap: No server port specifed, select 61820 as the port.
pktcap: Local CID 2.
pktcap: Listen on port 61820.
pktcap: Main thread: 872429526208.
pktcap: Dump Thread: 872430057216.
pktcap: The output file format is pcapng.
reading from file -, link-type EN10MB (Ethernet), snapshot length 65535
pktcap: Recv Thread: 872430585600.
pktcap: Accept...
pktcap: Vsock connection from port 1027 cid 2.
08:45:23.196577 00:50:56:xx:xx:xx > 01:80:c2:00:00:0e, ethertype LLDP (0x88cc), length 145: LLDP, length 131
        Chassis ID TLV (1), length 7
          Subtype Interface name (6): vmnic0
       
        Port ID TLV (2), length 7
          Subtype MAC address (3): 00:50:56:xx:xx:xx
         
        Time to Live TLV (3), length 2: TTL 180s
          0x0000:  00b4
        Port Description TLV (4), length 45: port 123 on dvSwitch-name (cswitch)
  
        System Name TLV (5), length 17: esx-example
   
        System Description TLV (6), length 33
          VMware ESXi Releasebuild-22380479
        
        System Capabilities TLV (7), length 4
          System  Capabilities [Bridge] (0x0004)
          Enabled Capabilities [Bridge] (0x0004)
          0x0000:  0004 0004
        End TLV (0), length 0

Resolution

Contact Cisco to validate if additional parameters related to LLDP can be displayed on the UI.