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Fix: HP Virtual Connect Flex-10 - ESX 4.0 U1 in an Active/Active Configuration does Not Failover Using SmartLink
I’ve been troubleshooting a ESX implementation on a solution based on HP c7000 blade enclosure, which had two HP Virtual Connect interconnect modules builtin. The blade server used was HP Proliant DL460c G6. I checked the VMware HCL and noticed some requirements to get this to work on vSphere 4.0 Update 1.
Output from VMware HCL:
Notice that ESX 4.0 U1 is supported but there are a couple notes. One is to install a specific driver - esx40-net-bnx2x_400.1.48.107-1.0.4. I downloaded and installed the driver on all the ESX servers.
Now I wanted to test the failover. In the HP Virtual Connect Manager I disabled the Shared Uplink Set for Bay 2. I had already setup a continous ping and verified that I still had connectivity to both service console and to VMs running on the hosts, through interconnect bay 1. Test was succesful.
Then I switched arround, enabled Shared Uplink Set 2 and disabled Shared Uplink Set 1 for Bay 1. This time I lost connectivity to both service console and ESX hosts and even I waited a couple minutes, it never came up. I had one other blade server on that enclosure, that was running Microsoft Windows, which I didnt have any problems connecting to.
So I thought the reason was with the ESX configuration.
After I verified all settings on both the ESX hosts ,HP Virtual Connect and the physical switches, which all were identical configured in regards to both interconnect bays, I decided to call HP Support on this issue. I was referenced to a public advisory stating that HP Virtual Connect Flex-10 - ESX 4.0 U1 in an Active/Active Configuration does Not Failover Using SmartLink.
The solution is the following three action points:
- Verify that the firmware on HP Virtual Connect was running 2.30 as minimum. This setup was running with 2.32 (newest version)
- Verify that the NIC driver version was Broadcom NetXtreme II Ethernet Network Controller driver 1.52.12.v40.3 (minimum) for ESX/ESXi 4.0. This was different from what the VMware HCL stated.
- Verify that the NC532i/m bootcode version 5.0.11 (minimum). The bootcode on the NC532 was NOT up-to-date on each blade.
I updated both the NIC driver in ESX and the NIC bootcode with the HP Firmware Maintenance CD and after a reboot, failover was working just as expected. It is recommended by HP to update the bootcode after the NIC driver is installed on the ESX server.
I have NOT been able to find the public advisory article on the HP website on this in regards to VMware vSphere, hence this article.
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Feel free to leave a comment. Thanks in advance. Regards Heino.
[...] you running HP Virtual Connect with VMware vSphere, be sure to check out this post about a potential failover failure. According to the post, the problem can be resolved by running newer versions of the HP Virtual [...]