Virtual Machines Lose Network Connectivity When Pinned to Intel X710/XL710 Network Adapters with Hardware LLDP Enabled

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Virtual machines experience a complete loss of external network communication and are unable to forward traffic outside of the ESXi host when pinned to or utilizing an Intel X710 series network interface card (NIC) uplink.

Environment

 

• VMware vSphere ESXi

• Intel X710, XL710, or X722 family network adapters

• i40en Network Driver

 

Cause

This family of network adapters features an embedded Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) engine. When enabled, this hardware agent independently issues packets that can conflict with the vSphere networking stack and MAC address assignments. This collision confuses the physical switch CAM tables (often manifesting as MAC flapping), which ultimately drops or fails to forward the traffic originating from the virtual machines or vmkernel ports residing on those uplinks.

Resolution

To restore communication, the hardware-level LLDP agent must be disabled directly within the NIC firmware for all associated ports.

1. Reboot the ESXi host and access the system BIOS / Device Settings during the hardware initialization phase.

2. Navigate to the specific NIC configuration menu for the Intel X710/XL710 adapter.

3. Locate the LLDP Agent setting and change its value to Disabled for each individual port on the adapter.

4. Save the BIOS configuration changes.

5. Boot into ESXi.

Additional Information

• Broadcom KB 324503: Hosts May Disconnect from vCenter or may not forward traffic when using a X710 or XL710 or X722 family card when LLDP is enabled

• Dell KB 000211622 (Hardware Configuration Example): PowerEdge R7525: Install OS failed from Intel X710 PXE Boot