More Dell PowerEdge M1000e woes

I previously commented about issues we had with one of the pass through I/O modules with our M1000e chassis. After opening a case with support, they had us do some things such as remove the blades, remove the modules, etc, and it started working. Still not a particularly promising sign. After building out our ESX servers and trying to put VMs on them, we had all kinds of unusual issues with trying to run FCoE Active/Active on them. We were getting errors such as:

Apr 23 15:02:04 host vmkernel: 0:00:39:45.582 cpu0:4284)WARNING: LinNet: netdev_watchdog: NETDEV WATCHDOG: vmnic2: transmit timed out
Apr 23 15:02:04 host vmkernel: 0:00:39:45.854 cpu3:4260)NMP: nmp_DeviceUpdatePathStates: Activated path "NULL" for NMP device "naa.60060060060060060060060060060060".
Apr 23 15:02:04 host vmkernel: 0:00:39:45.854 cpu4:4258)NMP: nmp_DeviceUpdatePathStates: Activated path "NULL" for NMP device "naa.60060060060060060060060060060060".
Apr 23 15:02:04 host vmkernel: 0:00:39:45.854 cpu10:4255)NMP: nmp_DeviceUpdatePathStates: Activated path "NULL" for NMP device "naa.60060060060060060060060060060060".

There was another blog post documenting a similar issue with other Emulex cards that seemed to point to an incompatibility between the Emulex drivers and the current version of ESX. Dell did not have an update available, and they reached the same conclusion - that they were incompatible. So, they RMA'd the I/O modules and the Emulex Mezzanine cards for Brocade Mezzanine cards and the corresponding replacement pass through I/O modules. So far, things have been better. We'll see if it holds.

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