No connectivity on the newly connected NICs

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

On a newly setup ESXi host, uplink physical network connectivity is unavailable via any VLAN. This is observed independent of the VM Guest Operating System (i.e. it it observer with Windows and Linux VMs). 

The following conditions are also true:
- VM connectivity is tested by attaching the affected ESXi pNIC (physical nic) to a standard switch and a Distributed Switch with the same results
- The correct VLAN tag is uses on the portgroup
- pings sent by the VM to any IP go unanswered
- The VM does not learn any mac addresses on it's network interface
- The same behaviour is observed regardless of whether the vmxnet3 NIC driver is used or any other (eg E1000)
- packet captures performed on the vNIC of the VM show that it's sending out ICMP echo requests (pings) out but not receiving any replies
- packet captures performed on the uplink physical NIC show that the NIC is sending out the ICMP echo requests, but does not receive any traffic
- the "Observed networks" section of the DVS for the affected pNICs shows "No networks"

Environment

VMware ESXi

Cause

This issue happens as a result of a misconfiguration in the physical network either on the switchport connected to the ESXi pNIC or within the server hardware where network configuration is applied to the server..

Resolution

Troubleshoot this with the server vendor and the physical network equipment vendor.

Additional Information

To perform packet captures on ESXi host, please refer to the following documentation:
1. Packet capture on ESXi using the pktcap-uw tool

2. Packet Capturing for ESXi and NSX Testing and Troubleshooting