VMware - Broadcom 1000Gbps NIC does not link at 100Mbps to a Cisco switch port

Posted by Spirit on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Spirit
Published on 2012-04-02T17:35:03Z Indexed on 2012/04/02 23:32 UTC
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Today we've stumbled on a very awkward situation with our VMWare Server. The server is with ESX 3.5 that has a 1Gbps NIC.

We bought a brand new managed Cisco Linksys switch with 10/100Mbps interface ports but when we plugged the cable in one of the ports the link simply does not wanted to activate :S...

Does anyone with more VMware experience have ever had similar problem? From what I know is that 1Gbps NICs are backwards compatible with 100Mbps switches.

This is what we've tryed so far but with no success:

  1. Tryed: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1004089

  2. Tryed to modify the /etc/modules.conf folowing the guide from this article http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=813

  3. After the changes I have restarted the networking services using # service network restart, # service mgmt-vmware restart and # service vmware-vpxa restart

It seems that no matter how many times, or whatever approach/method (GUI or Shell) we try to change the speed and duplex of the network adapter and to force it to 100mbps it only accepts 1Gbps ..

I am starting to go nuts :@

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