Unable to enable vmk vMotion interface, fails with "Operation not permitted: VSI_node_net_tcpip_instances_plumb"

Products

• VMware NSX

Issue/Introduction

- When listing the vmk interfaces, the vmk interface for vMotion it shows the Enabled state as 'false' using the command: esxcfg-vmknic -l

- When tried to set the interface of the vMotion to true using the following command, it fails with error:

esxcli network ip interface set -i vmk2 -e true

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi

Cause

After disabling the vmknic the associated port may be reclaimed by vDS, so the port may not be available anymore when the vmknic is enabled again. Due to this, vMotion of the VMs will fail towards this host

Resolution

To resolve:

1. Delete the vMotion vmk interface from the CLI:

esxcli network ip interface remove -i vmk2

2. Use the same IP details and recreate the vmk interface from the vCenter UI for that host and now you can see the interface is enabled to 'true' (Steps to create the vmk interface)

Additional Information

Reference KB: ESXCLI command to enable a disabled vmknic on vDS fails