Virtual Server Network Issue - Poweredge R200, Broadcom BCM5721, Windows Server 2008

Hi all,

 

Hope you can help. I have a problem I have been working on for almost two days now and I am becoming extremely frustrated. I have just purchased two Poweredge R200 rack servers - Intel quad-core, 8GB RAM, 750GB hard disks. The plan is to run two virtual servers on each R200.

 

I installed Windows 2008 Enterprise x64 without issue, then installed Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1. Again, everything fine. I connected the server to a test router (they're not in the rack yet), and it picked up a DHCP IP address and connected out to the Web. Great. I also tested with a static IP - again, no problem.

 

I installed Windows Server 2008 Standard 32-bit on the two VMs, and again, everything was fine. Until I tried to connect to the Web. Neither VM is picking up an IP address - I receive "Media disconnected" for all NIC connections.

 

After searching around on this issue, I have discovered that the Broadcom NICs have severe problems with virtualisation. I find this astonishing. If I had been aware of this issue before purchasing the servers I would certainly never have made the purchase with the Broadcom NICs included.

 

I have tried a number of remedies, all of which have failed:

 

1. The default Windows drivers were installed, so I installed the latest Broadcom drivers (10.82.0.0). No difference.

 

2. I downloaded the latest R200 drivers and ran the Driver Management Apps Installer tool. This laughably fails with the error:

 

Broadcom Drivers and Management Applications requires that your computer is running Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008

 

3. A message board suggested disabling IPMI. I downloaded the Broadcom utility to do this but when I run it I am told:

 

Program Error: Code=62, No supported network adapter found.

 

It doesn't matter how I enter my MAC address - upper-case, lower-case, no spaces, no colons, no dashes, spaces, colons, dashes - it never finds my card.

 

4. Microsoft advised disabling Media Sensing (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/239924). I've disabled this on both the main server, and on the VMs, and tried every combination of the two. No luck.

 

I find it amazing that companies like Dell, HP, and Fujitsu can ship servers with what are clearly inferior NICs, especially as virtualisation is so popular these days. Obviously Broadcom offer a much cheaper alternative than the Intel option.

 

I am further annoyed as I have two brand new servers which are not doing what they are supposed to do, and I have spent two days trying to work my way around a quite ridiculous problem. I wonder how many work hours have been wasted by people trying to resolve what should be a non-issue.

 

I will be deeply grateful if somebody can point me in the right direction here. Thanks for reading and hopefully I'll hear from you soon.

 

Thanks in advance,

Mike.