On the host 1 physical adapter is plugged into our network, on host itself I have Hyper-V role. I have created a external switch and binded it to the physical Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet, box is checked for "Allow management operating system to share this network adapter".
I created a few VMs on this host, configured them to use my newly created switch and everything is working perfectly. At random, the virtual switch and physical switch stop receiving packets and all network activity stops functioning (I see packets being sent at times, nothing returned). At this point, I am unable to ping the server using IP nor am I able to communicate from host to outside world. The ugly workaround I have found is to disable/enable both physical NIC and virtual switch, at this point network connectivity resumes and I start receiving packets.
After doing some research I found that my NIC firmware was outdated, this is the version I found Network_Firmware_P32M4_WN64_7.6.15.EXE. The FW is installed using Dell SUU (SUU_730_64bit) and a reboot is also performed on server. At this point I feel I have found root cause but again as if my hardware is haunted, the problem happens again. Both physical/virtual adapters stop receiving packets and network connectivity is lost again.
> Driver details for Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet
> Driver Date:01/28/2013 Driver Version: 15.6.0.10
Other things i have tried is manually setting duplex speed to full, still same issue. I have not messed with TCP offloading as I have been advised by many people that this is not related (something I could try if given valid reason?)
OS: Windows Server 2012 Datacenter
What could be the issue?
UPDATE Advanced properties of physical and virtual switch
NIC1 802.3az EEE Disable *EEE {0}
NIC1 Flow Control Rx & Tx Enabled *FlowControl {3}
NIC1 Interrupt Moderation Enabled *InterruptMo... {1}
NIC1 Jumbo Mtu 1500 *JumboPacket {1500}
NIC1 Large Send Offload V2 (IPv4) Enabled *LsoV2IPv4 {1}
NIC1 Large Send Offload V2 (IPv6) Enabled *LsoV2IPv6 {1}
NIC1 Maximum Number of RSS Queues RSS 1 Queue *NumRssQueues {1}
NIC1 ARP Offload Enabled *PMARPOffload {1}
NIC1 NS Offload Enabled *PMNSOffload {1}
NIC1 Priority & VLAN Priority & VLAN Enabled *PriorityVLA... {3}
NIC1 Receive Buffers Default *ReceiveBuffers {200}
NIC1 Receive Side Scaling Enabled *RSS {1}
NIC1 Speed & Duplex Auto Negotiation *SpeedDuplex {0}
NIC1 TCP/UDP Checksum Offload (I... Rx & Tx Enabled *TCPUDPCheck... {3}
NIC1 TCP/UDP Checksum Offload (I... Rx & Tx Enabled *TCPUDPCheck... {3}
NIC1 Transmit Buffers 500 *TransmitBuf... {500}
NIC1 Virtual Machine Queues Enabled *VMQ {1}
NIC1 VMQ VLAN Filtering Disable *VMQVlanFilt... {0}
NIC1 Wake on Magic Packet Enabled *WakeOnMagic... {1}
NIC1 Wake on Pattern Match Enabled *WakeOnPattern {1}
NIC1 EEE Control Policies Optimal Power and Performance EeeCtrlMode {1}
NIC1 Network Address -- NetworkAddress {--}
NIC1 VLAN ID 0 VlanID {0}
NIC1 Ethernet@WireSpeed Enable WireSpeed {1}
NIC1 WOL Speed Lowest Speed Advertised WolSpeed {256}
vEthernet (extSwitch) IPv4 Checksum Offload Rx & Tx Enabled *IPChecksumO... {3}
vEthernet (extSwitch) IPSec Offload Auth Header and ESP Enabled *IPsecOffloadV2 {3}
vEthernet (extSwitch) Jumbo Packet Disabled *JumboPacket {1514}
vEthernet (extSwitch) Large Send Offload Version ... Enabled *LsoV2IPv4 {1}
vEthernet (extSwitch) Large Send Offload Version ... Enabled *LsoV2IPv6 {1}
vEthernet (extSwitch) TCP Checksum Offload (IPv4) Rx & Tx Enabled *TCPChecksum... {3}
vEthernet (extSwitch) TCP Checksum Offload (IPv6) Rx & Tx Enabled *TCPChecksum... {3}
vEthernet (extSwitch) UDP Checksum Offload (IPv4) Rx Enabled *UDPChecksum... {2}
vEthernet (extSwitch) UDP Checksum Offload (IPv6) Rx Enabled *UDPChecksum... {2}
vEthernet (extSwitch) Network Address -- NetworkAddress {--}