LLDP information for the Broadcom NetXtreme E-Series vmnic adapters flaps between missing and repopulating.

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• The ESXi hosts are using the Broadcom NetXtreme E-Series vmnic adapters.
  
  
• LLDP on the vDS is set to "Both" (i.e. Listen and Advertise). For more details, please refer to Enable Link Layer Discovery Protocol on a vSphere Distributed Switch.
  
  
• For example, let us say we have vmnic0 and vmnic1 on an ESXi host. Sometimes, the LLDP info is shown only for vmnic0, not for vmnic1. Sometimes, it is shown for both adapters and sometimes, it goes missing for both the adapters.
  
  
• An adapter for which the LLDP info is currently populating, when we do a packet capture on the uplink, we can see the LLDP packet received from the switch has the correct Destination MAC set for LLDP_Multicast:
  
  
  
  
• An adapter for which the LLDP info is currently missing, when we do a packet capture on the uplink, we can see the LLDP packet received from the switch has the wrong Destination MAC set for LLDP_Multicast:
  
  

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi

Cause

The vmnic BIOS settings of "LLDP nearest bridge" and "LLDP nearest non-TPMR bridge" are the cause of this issue.

Here - NetXtreme-E User Guide for Dell Platforms is the Dell manual for the Broadcom NetXtreme cards where we can find more info about the options "LLDP nearest bridge" and "LLDP nearest non-TPMR bridge".

Resolution

From the BIOS settings of the Broadcom NetXtreme cards, disable "LLDP nearest bridge" and "LLDP nearest non-TPMR bridge". Below is a sample screenshot from the BIOS page for the card:

For the steps on how to navigate to the above BIOS settings page for the vmnic adapters, please refer to your server hardware manual or, engage your hardware vendor.