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Wednesday 28 September 2011

Ghost VMkernel Adapter

I came across a strange issue recently when configuring a new vDS in vSphere 5.  I had already configured two VMkernel adapters but for some reason one of them half created.  Only one was visible when viewing the vDS settings on the host:

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When attempting to create a new one I’d receive a message stating that one already existed (apologies I don’t have the screen shot as I fixed it before creating this post).  I was unable to locate this within vCenter or even when connecting directly to the host.  Only way I could resolve it was to enable and connect to the host via SSH and list all VMkernel adapters with the following command:

esxcli network ip interface list

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Now I could see the offending adapter.  Next option was to remove it:

esxcli network ip interface remove –i <Adapter name>

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Now when listing the adapters again it was successfully remove and could be re-added again within vCenter.