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The issue mentioned in one of my previous blogposts (see ESXi and EMC CLARiiON registration issue) now has a workaround! The problem is that the host profiles of vSphere mix up the vmk0 and vmk1 interfaces, after which the CLARiiON tries to communicate through the wrong VMkernel interface with ESXi.

A good friend of mine Duco Jaspars (www.vConsult.nl) pointed me towards this VMTN thread where this problem is discussed. The contributers of the thread came to the same conclusion that the host profile was indeed to blame.

It can be resolved by manually editing the host profile. You have to make sure the management host interface is the first one in the list (so it will be assigned vmk0):

Renaming the host port groups so that management comes first and gets to be vmk0

Do not forget to alter the settings of the host port groups so that they once again match the rename you just did. For example, you’ll need to adjust the “Services for the virtual NIC” to match management and other functions (such as VMotion) to your interfaces. Also you’ll need to change the failover policies back to what they should be if you had different policies for both vmk networks.

Now the host profile should be ok, and when you force this profile onto your hosts they should use vmk0 as their management interface.

One final hint from Duco: Hosts which already have this profile applied, will not reapply the profile automagically, not even after editing the profile (because they think they are still compliant). He found an easy way to force the edited profile onto the hosts: Simply remove the second vmnic from the vswitch where the management interface is, then apply the edited profile. It will force the recreation of that vSwitch (and add your second vmnic back!), and the ordering of the vmkernel interfaces should now match the adjusted host profile.

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