When troubleshooting
an ESXi host one of the most common problems is testing connectivity. A tool that used on the console or ssh
session of the ESXi host is vmkping. Use cases are testing connectivity from
vmkernel to other servers in cluster like vMotion or vSAN connectivity.
This article from VMware KB article 1003728 shows use case on how to use vmkping.
There are situations where you may not have access to the root account to ssh into the box. There is way to still troubleshooting vmkernel network connectivity by using PowerCLi and ESXCli.
$esxcli = Get-EsxCli -VMHost (Get-VMHost "testesxihost") -V2
$params = $esxcli.network.diag.ping.CreateArgs()
$params.host = '10.1.1.2'
$params.interface = 'vmk0'
$params.size = '1472' #use 1472 for 1500 MTU or 8972 for 9000 MTU (VMware uses these values on MTU pings on ESXi)
$res = $esxcli.network.diag.ping.Invoke($params)
$res.summary
You will then get output like this:
<
Duplicated : 0
HostAddr : 10.1.1.2
PacketLost : 0
Recieved : 3
RoundtripAvg : 49
RoundtripAvgMS : 0
RoundtripMax : 61
RoundtripMaxMS : 0
RoundtripMin : 42
RoundtripMinMS : 0
Transmitted : 3
You can get further script options for ESXCLI for networking.diag.ping by:
PS C:\> $params
Name Value
---- -----
host Unset, ([string], optional)
wait Unset, ([string], optional)
df Unset, ([boolean], optional)
interval Unset, ([string], optional)
ttl Unset, ([long], optional)
debug Unset, ([boolean], optional)
nexthop Unset, ([string], optional)
count Unset, ([long], optional)
netstack Unset, ([string], optional)
size Unset, ([long], optional)
ipv4 Unset, ([boolean], optional)
ipv6 Unset, ([boolean], optional)
interface Unset, ([string], optional)
For help:
PS C:\> $esxcli.network.diag.ping.Help()
vim.EsxCLI.network.diag.ping
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Send ICMP echo requests to network hosts.
Param
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- count | Specify the number of packets to send.
- debug | VMKPing debug mode.
- df | Set DF bit on IPv4 packets.
- host | Specify the host to send packets to. This parameter is required when not executing ping in debug mode (-D)
- interface | Specify the outgoing interface.
- interval | Set the interval for sending packets in seconds.
- ipv4 | Ping with ICMPv4 echo requests.
- ipv6 | Ping with ICMPv6 echo requests.
- netstack | Specify the TCP/IP netstack which the interface resides on
- nexthop | Override the system's default route selection, in dotted quad notation. (IPv4 only. Requires int
| erface option)
- size | Set the payload size of the packets to send.
- ttl | Set IPv4 Time To Live or IPv6 Hop Limit
- wait | Set the timeout to wait if no responses are received in seconds.