Hi, if your part number   is  RC49N | Intel Ethernet X540-T2 Dual Port 10GBASE-T Server, you could try upgrade   CMC version. (must be a Dell part) Hope this helps

Hi, the first step is  reseating the Power Supply

Hi OP, please ignore my comment on reseating the power supply, that was for another thread. My apologies.

Thank you for the reply... are you saying that no Dell version of the x540-T2 may have issues in the vrtx?

Is there a way to tell without pulling out the cards?  I've swapped them around so many times trying to get this to work I am not sure which is which.  Of the 4 physical adapters two are working (one bound to each host).  The other, on both hosts show as "down" after 2-3 minutes of working post reboot.  If I have to  pull them I can later tonight... 

Just for confirmation, and so I can verify compatibility, what is the part number of the X540-T2 installed in the server?

one of the ones that is not working, pulled it and put it in another system to check the card... working ok, is 03dfv8 

When I search for that part number if come back as  a dell 

3DFV8 is indeed supported on the VRTX, as Young E stated I would verify that the CMC is up to date, also would you verify if the system it is working in is at the same or newer CMC version?

I am running CMC 3.4.200.202101130302.  So the latest version.

Any other suggestions?  It's very odd that only two of the cards are working, one per host. 

I tried putting both of the "working" cards on one host and they did remain functional.  In that test only one host remained online, both of the nics for the second host went "down".

Seems like its a card issue... but I have have tried a total of 8 cards, 6 540s, 2 Intel 520s and of that only 2 of the 540s are working.  None of the other cards remain "up" as a second card. It seems very unlikely that all of those cards are having issues.  While I haven't tested all of them in other systems I have tested several and they are working as expected.

The CMC shows all 4 cards as powered on, but the network is "down" on the second card.

vCenter sees all of the nics but provides an error that Cisco Discovery Protocol is not available on the cards registering as "down", after they go "down".  When they are "up" the CDP is working.

Would you confirm if the card is running the latest firmware 18.5.18 , which can be found here?

So I managed to find a solution... so far at least.  Apparently I had bumped one of the power supply cables.  I reset it so all 4 Power Supplies were on.  I then moved the cards around moving the second cards to fabric B.  I had all 4 on Fabric C.  Unfortunately I made a number of changes all at once so I don't know if it was the power supply, the fabric (I had tired splitting the fabric previously) or the nics that fixed the issue.

Honestly I am just happy that its finally working correctly.  We shall see if it continues to work.. 

Thank you to those who responded.

unfortunately the nics stayed connected for an hour or so before I left the office, but when I came in this morning the two nics were both off line.

Any other suggestions?

Did you confirm the firmware version on the nics, and if behind 18.5.18 did you update?

The cards that would not remain "up" had firmware in the version 16 range.  I have updated all cards to 20.0.16 A00 and everything is currently working. 

Thank you for the suggestion!  I'll monitor it and if they are still "up" in the morning I'll update this post.

Mark

One out of the two cards remained "up".  The other still goes "down" after a short period of working.   I swapped it for another, did the firmware update but it still keeps dropping.  I moved it to a different PCIe slot... same issue.

Any other suggestions?