Hi,
I have an APC AP9631 NMC that I want to use to shutdown an ESXi 6.7 host running on a Dell R440, using a vMA containing PowerChute Network Shutdown 4.2 (PCNS).
If I connect the NMC Ethernet port to one of R400 NICs (for instance, vmnic3), Powerchute cannot communicate with NMC. My other virtual machines also cannot ping NMC. If I connect NMC to my laptop, I can access it normally.
However, if I connect NMC to a physical switch and then connect this switch to one of R440 NICs (e.g. vmnic1), everything works fine: PCNS finds the NMC and the shutdown feature works as expected. When directly connected, both ports (host and at the device) have their orange LEDs solid lit, as opposed when connected to the physical switch that makes them blink as normal.
Do you know why no VM can ping the NMC when it's directly connected to the host and/or why PCNS cannot communicate with NMC? I believe the answer might be the same.
Some information:
ESXi IP address: 10.0.240.201, manually set.
NMC IP address: 10.0.240.205, manually set.
R440 has 4 NICs, all of them on the same vSwitch, which is also connected to the VM Management network.
The physical switch that do the trick is a Rockwell Stratix 5700 (equivalent to Cisco IE 2000), running Cisco IOS.
UPS is a SRC2000XLI.
ESXi host is licensed (Essentials kit).
Management network and "Plant network" is on the same switch (vSwitch0), that has vmnic0 to vmnic3.
There is a also "vSwitchInternal" with no vmnic attached that I use to network one VM to another (subnet 172.31.0.x).
I have two virtual machines running Windows Server 2012R2 and one running Windows 7 besides PCNS VM.
Please find below two pictures of networking configuration (sorry for the quality):
Best regards,
Andre