NIC Card Speed Log Retrieval

[Sivaramsharmar]

Hi All,

For one the ESXi host Nic Card Speed has been changed from 1 GBPS to 100 MBPS, I have looked in hostd.log, vpxa.log & vmkernel.log but I can't see any log related to VMNIC

Is there any way to get those logs using Powercli or any other way to get it, Please help.

[Craig_Baltzer]

How was the NIC speed changed (i.e. physical switch port was reconfigured and things re-negotiated or did someone go into one of the VMware interfaces (VI Client/Web Client/PowerCLI) and changed it)? If it was changed from the VMware interfaces have a look at "Get-VIEvent" to see if you can find an event logged

[Sivaramsharmar]

Hi Craig Baltzer,

NIC Card Speed Changed automatically from 1 GBPS to 100 MBPS, From Virtual Infra we haven't done any modifications and from Network side also they haven't got any modifications, But speed got changed to 100 MBPS and network team doesn't have any log for it. So we need to know at what time NIC Card Speed changed from 1 GBPS to 100 MBPS, Is there any way to pull the NIC Card Speed Change Log, Please suggest.

[Craig_Baltzer]

If its anywhere it will be in the /var/log/vmkernel.log file. I say "if" as there may be NICs that don't generate an event. When the speed changes you should see a NIC down event followed by a NIC up event indicating the new speed. You're looking for something like this:

2015-08-17T07:21:55.096Z cpu23:33293)<3>bnx2 0000:03:00.0: vmnic0: NIC Copper Link is Down

<6>bnx2 0000:03:00.0: vmnic0: NIC Copper Link is Up, 1000 Mbps full duplex, receive & transmit flow control ON

[Sivaramsharmar]

Hi Craig,

Thank you so much for your support on this.

I have seen /var/log/VMkernel.log and seen similar log and that date logged was while setting up this new server, but I need to see similar Instead of link down, link speed got changed to 100 MBPS from 1000 MBPS.

Is there any way it will log this, Please let me know

[Craig_Baltzer]

I tried it on 3 different brands of switches I have access to (Cisco, HP and NetGear), and a change in speed always results in a "link down/link up" event. So your script logic would need to be scan vmkernel.log for these events, then compare adjacent events to see if the reported speed has changed.

[Sivaramsharmar]

Hi Craig,

Thank you so much for supporting me & for your valuable time. I haven't find any link down/up in VMKernel log for recently NIC Card Speed got degraded, If the log is not happening, is there any way to find out why ESXi is not logging it. Please suggest.

[Craig_Baltzer]

What kind of servers and what kind of NICs are you using? I'll see if I happen to have one in the lab just to confirm that the NIC in question actually causes log information to be written...

[Sivaramsharmar]

Hi Craig,

We are using HP DL 380p Servers with ESXi 5.5 U2 OS. We are using 1GIG Ethernet Card for these HP Servers. Please look into it.

[Craig_Baltzer]

I'm assuming these are "Gen8" servers? The 1Gb NICs are the 4 onboard NICs (Broadcom), or do you have add-in PCI-E cards?

As a test can you unplug the cable on one of the NICs then look at the vmkernel log and confirm that you see an event?

[Sivaramsharmar]

Hi Craig,

Yes I forgot to mention we are using HP Gen8 Series only, This server is in production so can't unplug it and check it. If you can able to suggest alternate way it will be helpful for me.

Thanks