Troubleshooting networking issues when using VMware products

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

When encountering network issues in a a virtualized environment, sometimes it can be daunting task to troubleshoot. This article attempts to point you in the right direction when experiencing the following issues:

• Random disconnections
• Slow speeds
• Unable to connect to servers or workstations
• Random network failures
• Unexpected packet loss
• Alerts or alarms being received

Resolution

In order to help you troubleshoot these problems we suggest you look at the following links:

 

VMware HA (High Availability)/vMotion failures in vCenter Server:

• Network redundancy message when configuring VMware High Availability in vCenter Server (1004700)
• Diagnosing VMware vMotion failure at 10% (1003734)
• NIC team failover, failback, or vMotion results in loss of network connectivity (1003969)
• VMotion migration warning: The VMotion interface of the destination host uses network, which differs from the network used by the VMotion interface of the source host (1003841)
• Incompatible HA Networks appearing when attempting to configure HA (High Availability) (1006541)
• Network redundancy message when configuring VMware High Availability in vCenter Server (1004700)

ESX/ESXi networking/configuration:

• ESX/ESXi hosts have intermittent or no network connectivity (1004109)
• Configuring networking from the ESX service console command line (1000258)
• Verifying ESX host networking configuration on the service console (1003796)
• Observed IP range does not show network in ESX or ESXi (1006744)
• Configuring the ESXi Management Network from the direct console (1006710)

 

Guest operating system issues/configuration:

• Troubleshooting virtual machine network connection issues (1003893)
• Networking Error: IP address already assigned to another adapter (1179)
• Troubleshooting a blank console when viewing virtual machines through a firewalled connection (10233)
• Poor network performance on Windows 2008 Server virtual machine (1009517)
• Choosing a network adapter for your virtual machine (1001805)
• Manually configuring a virtual machine to use the e1000 network adapter driver (1003020)
• Troubleshooting blocked inbound network traffic on Windows Vista or later after installing a VMware product (1004813)

Best Practices and Informational:

• Testing VMkernel network connectivity with the vmkping command (1003728)
• Sample configuration of EtherChannel / Link aggregation with ESX/ESXi and Cisco/HP switches (1004048)
• Sample Configuration - Network Load Balancing (NLB) Multicast mode over routed subnet - Cisco Switch Static ARP Configuration (1006525)
• Sample Configuration - Network Load Balancing (NLB) Multicast Mode Configuration (1006558)
• Verifying and troubleshooting networking connections that may cause VMware Converter to fail (1006607)
• Understanding networking types in hosted products (1006480)