New NIC, Unforseen gotcha

W

wildbill001

Weaksauce
Joined
Jun 2, 2012
Messages
85
Well, didn't see this coming. Not sure if I should post here or over in the network forum. Think I'll try here first.

Received my new-to-me but used Intel Pro 1000 PT dual-port today and slapped it into my ESXi 5.1 box. Disabled the RealTek interface on the mobo, unplugged it, and powered up. System had a new MAC (duh!) so I had to give it a static IP which then caused ESXi to think all the VMs I had created were copied. OK, I get that.

What I don't understand, however, is why the VMs now have new interfaces as well. For example, one RH system had eth0 and eth1. With the new Intel NIC, it now has eth3 & eth4 and no eth0 or eth1. Same thing for the other VMs, Did I miss something? Did I forget to do something to preserve the original configs?

It's not that big of a deal but I'd like to know if this is something I could have avoided and how.

Thanks!

Bill W.

PS: That Intel card is sweet! I wish I had gotten one when I started this ESXi journey.
 
It is not uncommon for the NIC ports to change inside ESXi when making changes, even same slot NIC changes cannot guarantee same numbering.

Here is a VMware KB --> Link that on how to "renumber" the NIC's. @MMS2013 there was discussion of a industry standard that was going to allow for useful and consistent (port level) naming. I did not catch the standard's name since I was too busy typing out snarky tweets!
 
If you have console access then you can just remove all your nics from the host, reboot, reboot again (yup, reboot twice in a row w/o nics), add the nic, reboot, and bam, the ordering is fine.
 
Thanks for that tip. Got things mostly back to "normal". HIndsight suggests that I should have realized there might be some changes. OH well, live and learn, which is the whole reason I have this system.

Bill W
 
Cool, very timely, just ran into this yesterday and didn't have time to do any research on it.
 
that sequence should not have happened.

The vmkernel UUID won't change (it's hard coded and stored in the boot bank), and there's no reason for the uuids of the VMs to change from boot time (although modifying their network settings may be required depending on how you added the new nic).

Very weird.
 
Hmmmm. Well a lot of weird things happen to systems in my house. Sometimes I'd swear the house is over an Indian burial mound. :cool:

Bill W
 
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