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Dell VRTX PCIE issues
Hello,
I have a VRTX with two M630 blades (1GB internal nics). I have installed two 540-t2 dual port 10GBe nics and mapped them to each blade. I am running VMware 7.0U1. The nics are seeing by the hosts and right after blade boot up all 4 10GBe nics are show as "up". After a few minutes two of the nics (one pcie card) switches to "down" and is no longer working. In the CMC the second Nic is show as powered on.
This issue happens with both blade. I have tried different PCIe slots, different fabrics and different 540-t2 cards with the same result. One of the cards (both 10GBe nics go down).
Am I missing something?
Thanks in advance for the help.
DELL-Young E
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Posted April 20th, 2021 21:00
Hi, the first step is reseating the Power Supply
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Posted April 20th, 2021 22:00
Hi OP, please ignore my comment on reseating the power supply, that was for another thread. My apologies.
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Did I answer your query? Please click on ‘Mark as Accepted Answer’. ‘Thumbs up’ the posts you like!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...
DELL-Chris H
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Posted April 21st, 2021 10:00
Just for confirmation, and so I can verify compatibility, what is the part number of the X540-T2 installed in the server?
DELL-Chris H
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Posted April 21st, 2021 11:00
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?
DELL-Chris H
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Did I answer your query? Please click on ‘Mark as Accepted Answer’. ‘Thumbs up’ the posts you like!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.
DELL-Chris H
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Posted April 21st, 2021 13:00
Would you confirm if the card is running the latest firmware 18.5.18 , which can be found here?
DELL-Chris H
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DELL-Young E
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Posted April 20th, 2021 21:00
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
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