Alarm "Physical NIC vmnic# linkstate is down." is not triggered when the link goes down

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• When a physical interface on the ESXi host goes down, only the following alarm is triggered:
  "Lost uplink redundancy on DVPorts: ######/## ## ## ## ## ## ## ##-## ## ## ## ## ## ## ##. Physical NIC vmnic# is down."
  Event Type ID: "esx.problem.net.dvport.redundancy.lost"
• You expected to see this alarm:
  "Physical NIC vmnic# linkstate is down."
  Event Type ID: "esx.problem.net.vmnic.linkstate.down"
• Since the Event Type ID is not generated by the ESXi host, it will not be visible in Aria Operations.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi

Cause

This is an expected behaviour. 

1. If the affected vmnic is not associated with any active portgroup or dvPorts, the Event Type ID: "esx.problem.net.vmnic.linkstate.down" - "Physical NIC vmnic# linkstate is down." will be triggered
2. If the affected vmnic is associated with active portgroups or dvPorts, the Event Type ID: "esx.problem.net.dvport.redundancy.lost" - "Lost uplink redundancy on DVPorts" will be triggered.

Resolution

This is a condition that may occur in a VMware ESXi environment.