RICKARD NOBEL AB

RICKARD NOBEL AB

Specialists in IT infrastructure services

Menu
  • About
  • Windows
  • Networking
  • VMware
  • Storage
Menu

VMKping ESXi 5.1 – select outgoing network adapter

Posted on April 8, 2013November 11, 2014 by Rickard Nobel

VMKping ESXi 5.1 – select outgoing network adapter to verify multipathing connectivity

When troubleshooting vSphere ESXi networking we have a new very useful option available in vmkping in ESXi 5.1 which adds the ability to select the outgoing adapter being used.

If you would like to verify for example iSCSI or NFS connectivity it is very important to make sure the correct paths are actually tested. If you have a multipathing configuration with several VMKnics in the same IP network this could be a bit difficult because earlier there was no way to really define the outgoing paths from ESXi.

VMKPING

Use the local ESXi shell or SSH to access the vmkping utility. We want to test if both interfaces could reach a certain iSCSI target.

The new available switch is called -I (uppercase i) and sets which outgoing vmkernel interface to transfer the packets through. Note that it is the vmkernel interfaces (i.e. vmk0, vmk1) you may select and not the physical NIC ports (vmnic0, vmnic1).

vmkping-4

vmkping -I vmk1 IP-target

This is a very useful addition to the vmkping tool as it allows the administrator to verify and troubleshoot a setup with multiple vmkernel interfaces on the same IP subnet, most often in a multipath storage configuration.

If verifying a storage network with jumbo frames enabled make sure to also use the correct parameters for jumbo vmkping otherwise the test will be of no value. See this post for details on jumbo frames troubleshooting.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Posts

  • Verify NTP connectivity in Windows
  • The Ethertype value, part 1
  • Password strength part 1, the mathematical basics
  • MS16-072 breaks Group Policy
  • ESXi virtual machine network statistics
  • Determine the Zeroed status of Thick Lazy disk
  • Eager thick vs Lazy thick disk performance

Contact

Categories

  • Networking
  • Storage
  • VMware
  • Windows

Recent Comments

  • Rickard Nobel on VMXNET3 vs E1000E and E1000 – part 1
  • cees vos on VMXNET3 vs E1000E and E1000 – part 1
  • Filipi Souza on Storage performance: IOPS, latency and throughput
  • Backup vs RAID - Web Hosting on How RAID 5 actually works
  • Stephen on Password strength part 1, the mathematical basics
©2021 RICKARD NOBEL AB