I often get these alerts on one of our servers in our environment. We run VMware ESX 4.1 on 5x Dell PowerEdge Servers each of similar spec, they all have 2x NICs that plug into a Cisco Infrastructure (6509 Chassis). They are all configured the same so I don't have reason to suspect a mis-configuration. This alert could be related to a hardware problem as I don't see anything on the Cisco side stating that the interface has gone down.
My first question is where in the logs I can check for more information on this issue? I have checked the /var/log/vmkwarning log but there is nothing to indicate that the connection has gone down.
From the Client View I can see the following events:
Lost uplink redundancy on virtual switch
"vSwitch0". Physical NIC vmnic1 is down.
Affected portgroups:"Vlan1xx", "Vlan1xx",
"Vlan1xx", "Service Console", "VMkernel".
warning
26/05/2011 15:22:23
esxserver2.domain
Uplink redundancy restored on virtual switch
"vSwitch0", portgroups: "Vlan1xx", "Vlan1xx",
"Vlan1xx", "Service Console", "VMkernel".
Physical NIC vmnic1 is up.
info
26/05/2011 15:22:27
esxserver2.domain
This constant issue turned serious this morning when the VMNIC1 changed speed to 100MB, this caused the Cisco end to drop the interface and I strangely managed to lose network connectivity to half the Virtual Machines on the host? It seems the Cisco side is set to auto so I will probably change this but it has never been an issue prior to this morning.
Prior to logging a call with Dell I could do with gathering the evidence required to prove hardware failure or bottoming out what the issue may be.
Richard.