How to test vmKernel connectivity

In case you are ever stuck trying to get our iSCSI Initiator to link up to the target or just troubleshooting some vMotion problems you can do the following:

From the console or terminal on a ESX host (CLI will work for ESXi as well) do teh following:

vmkping

This will use the vmk port groups to test connectivity to the iSCSI or other vSphere servers.  A good ping will result in a result like this:

PING server(10.0.0.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 10.0.0.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=10.245 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.0.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.935 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.0.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.926 ms

A failure of the ping is like this:

[root@server]# vmkping server
PING server (10.0.0.2) 56(84) bytes of data.

-– server ping statistics — 3 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 3017ms

This method will help to resolve the unable to connect to destination errors that a vMotion can produce


vMotion Changes in vSphere 4.1
VMworld 2010 is over... So?