vCloud Director cell – change network adapter

During service maintenance this week i had to change one of the vNICs for a vCD 5.1 cell (Red Hat Enterprise Server 6.2) to make all 3 vNICs using the same adapter type for consistency purposes.

For each cell we are using 3 vNIC where:

• Network Adapter 1 is connected to a management VLAN for e.g. administration (SSH) and monitoring
• Network Adapter 2 is connected to a server VLAN and used by the vCloud Director Cell http/https connections.
• Network Adapter 3 is connected to a server VLAN and used by the vCloud Director Cell console proxy connections.

I removed the virtual machine “Network adapter 3”, referencing ifcfg-eth2 in the vCD cell operating system,  and add a new “Network adapter 3″ with the same adapter type as used by Network Adapter 1” and “Network Adapter 2”

When i started the virtual machine the new eth2 interface didn’t start. I checked the ifcfg-eth2 file located in the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts directory and verified that the MAC address in the ifcfg-eth2 file was the same as shown in the vSphere Client.

I took me a while (asked google) to remember that Red Hat Enterprise Server 6.x creates one more file where the MAC address is specified, the 70-persistent-net.rules file located in the /etc/udev/rules.d directory.

Removing the lines associated with the old eth2 MAC address in the 70-persistent-net.rules file and reboot the server fixed my problem. The same procedure is applicable when e.g. duplicate, change network adapter for the vCenter Server Appliance.

Updated RedHat 6.x skills required for @magander3 is the main take away from this weeks vCD Cell maintenance work.