BFD Tunnel sessions fail to establish on Bare Metal Edge nodes using Intel E810C NICs.

Products

• VMware NSX

Issue/Introduction

• A total loss of overlay connectivity may be experienced on Bare Metal (BM) Edge nodes with Intel E810 NICs.
• The following symptoms are associated with this issue:
  • BFD Tunnel sessions remain in a "Down" state.
  • Incoming packets to the TEP (Tunnel Endpoint) interface are received in datapath without the proper VLAN tag (as seen in packet capture), even when the physical switch port is configured in trunk mode.
  • ARP replies from remote TEPs are visible in packet captures, without VLAN tag on the physical interface but are not processed by the datapath because the VLAN tag is missing upon arrival at the interface.

Environment

• Product: NSX
• Hardware: Bare Metal Edge nodes equipped with Intel E810C NICs.

Cause

The issue is caused by incorrect VLAN handling within the DPDK 24.11 driver/library when used with the Intel E810 series NIC. Incoming packets have their VLAN tags stripped but flags are set improperly before reaching the NSX datapath, causing the packets (such as BFD and ARP) to be dropped or ignored.

Resolution

This is a known issue impacting VMware NSX.

Additional Information

Impact

Tunnels will not come up, leading to complete isolation of the affected transport node.