[Xen-API] [XCP] Intel 82576 DomU network problems

[Berry Hoekstra <berry.hoekstra@xxxxxxx>]

Hi list,

I have successfully installed a default instalation of XCP 1.1 on a
variety of Supermicro servers with Intel 82576 NICs. However, when
implementing VLAN tagging for virtual machines I run into connectivity
problems. It seems that no ARP request are passed from the physical
network card to the VMs. This causes the VMs to be unavailable when no
traffic is passed from the VM to the physical network card. A similar
problem is described at the Citrix support forums at
http://forums.citrix.com/thread.jspa?threadID=280048,
http://forums.citrix.com/thread.jspa?threadID=279393 and
http://forums.citrix.com/thread.jspa?threadID=280930 .

The following topic recommends and explains how to upgrade the igb
drivers for the Intel 82576 NIC in our servers:
http://forums.citrix.com/thread.jspa?threadID=284319 . They recommend
to use version 2.4.13. The default installation of XCP 1.1 comes with
version 2.3.4. I was successful in updating the igb drivers to version
2.4.13, but the problem remains. When I updated to the latest igb
drivers (3.3.6), connectivity works at first, but ARP timeouts still
occur after 5 minutes. An easy, but undesired solution is to run a
ping command from the VM, which keeps the ARP entry alive.

A default installation of XenServer 6 doesn't have this problem. It
seems that the problem is related to the version of openvswitch used
in XCP 1.1 (openvswitch-1.0.2-82.1943), as XenServer 6 comes with
version 2.4.13 of the igb driver, but uses a different version of
openvswitch (openvswitch-1.0.99-104.9871). I did not succeed in
getting XAPI to work after compiling the latest version of openvswitch
(1.3.0) using the same parameters and patches as the version used in
XCP 1.1.

Does anyone have similar problems regarding XCP 1.1 and the Intel
82576 NIC or knows how to properly update openvswitch? I assume the
problem goes away when XCP 1.5 is released, as it is based on
XenServer 6.


Kind regards,

Berry Hoekstra

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