FIP VLAN ID unavail. Retry VLAN discovery

I was faced with the below log in ESXi “vmkernel.log” and I want to explain the issue and share the solution with you:

fip: fcoe_ctlr_vlan_request() is done

fip: host7: FIP VLAN ID unavail. Retry VLAN discovery

First, I want to say that this is an issue and not a serious problem and you can ignore it but the log will be repeated continuously.

Now, what is the root cause?

The root cause is using CNA adapters as network adapter. As you may now, CNA (Converged Network Adapter) is a network adapter that you can use its port as network port or FCoE port for storage connectivity.

FCoE is enabled by default on all ports and ESXi trying to discover FCoE VLAN and targets when discover the FCoE feature on the ports.

When ESXi couldn’t discover FCoE connection, force the driver to find and discover it again.

Now, what is the solution?

There is two solutions that I recommend use the second solution because removing driver or any part of ESXi is not recommended.

As the first solution, you can disable FCoE feature on the ports and remove the driver from ESXi:

Determine which vmnics have FCoE capability

esxcli fcoe nic list

Replace vmnicX with the output of the above command.

esxcli fcoe nic disable -n vmnicX

You will also need to remove the Broadcom FCoE VIB prior to rebooting.

esxcli software vib remove –vibname=scsi-bnx2fc

Now, second solution that you need to reboot your server and do the below instructions on BIOS or system configuration utility via UFEI:

First step, reboot your server!

Go to system configuration menu:

Then select your first CNA card/port and “Enter”:

At third step, you should choose “Device Hardware Configuration Menu”:

Now, you should change “Storage Personality” from FCoE to iSCSI:

At final step, save your new configuration and reboot your server.

Then check your log file again.