Esxi Nic Drivers
Posted by on Oct 31 2017 (updated on Nov 15 2017) in • • • When working on my recent article, • I quickly discovered that there seemed to be some shortcomings when checking the device driver versions for some network adapters, such as those that are found my set of two. These SoC ( System on a Chip) servers feature two integrated Intel I-350 1GbE ports and two integrated X552/X557 10GbE ports, details as seen at the Supermicro SuperServer SYS-5028D-TN4T. Googling around for results in these 2 VMware Knowledgebase articles right at the top: • Nope, that doesn't apply to any ESXi since 5.1, let's move on to the next KB article. • Alright, now we're getting warmer. In KB 1034674, I jumped down to the section entitled 'Obtaining Network card driver and firmware information,' and spotted this: In ESXi 5.x, run this command to figure out your network name (column 1): esxcli network nic list esxcli network nic list Now use the desired network name here, substituting it for vmnic0 esxcli network nic get -n vmnic0 esxcli network nic get -n vmnic0 This seemed very promising, at least at first. Then I soon realized that the detailed version of the igbn driver isn't there. On a whim, I also tried looking at Intel's readme for the latest.
Nope, turns out those instructions don't show driver details either: Use esxcli, vsish, or esxcfg-* to set or get the driver information, for example: • Get the driver info esxcli network nic get -n vmnic1 • Get an uplink stats esxcli network nic stats get -n vmnic1 • Get the Netqueue stats vsish -e get /net/pNics/vmnic1/stats the output is just 0.1.0.0. Time to come up with another way.
ConnectX® Ethernet Driver for VMware® ESXi Server. Mellanox native ESXi drivers enable industry-leading performance and efficiency as non-virtualized environments. Determining which storage or network driver is actively being used on ESXi host. An inbox driver is one that is delivered and installed with ESXi software. Async drivers are third-party vendor drivers certified by VMware. They do not come bundled with ESXi software and are usually downloaded from VMware.
My way, not necessarily the best or only way. If you have a better way, by all means, let us all know by dropping a comment below!
My alternative approach works broadly across many systems by simply looking for all drivers with gb in the name: esxcli software vib list grep gb esxcli software vib list grep gb Tada, there it is! Between each of 3 screenshots, I glean all I need, with a lot of detail, including hints about where the driver came from. In the next 2 screenshots below, you'll see I've run all 3 commands, on each Xeon D system.
Esxcli network nic list esxcli network nic get -n vmnic0 esxcli software vib list grep gb Let's have a look at the output of these 3 commands, for these 2 Xeon D systems. Example 1 • Xeon D-1541 • Intel I350 1GbE - fresh install of ESXi 6.5 Update 1 • default inbox drivers • nic name vmnic0 • driver name igbn • nic firmware 1.63.0:0x800009fa • nic driver 0.1.0.0-14vmw.650.1. • nic driver vendor VMW What's up with the INT and VMW that comes after the device driver?
• INTel • VMWare I could also figure out all the same things about the 10GbE NICs too, using the same commands. But I use vmnic2 instead of vmnic0. Example 2 • Xeon D-1567 • Intel X557 10GbE - already updated to ESXi 6.5 Update 1 EP04 • updated I350 and X557 • nic name vmnic2 • driver name ixgbe • nic firmware 0x800005ad • nic driver 4.5.3-1OEM.600.0.0.2494585 • nic driver vendor INT Note that this time around, I can see the basics of the driver version from the esxcli network nic get -n vmnic2 command this time, showing 4.5.3-iov, but slightly lacking in details, so I still used the esxcli software vib list grep gb command to get more. Ah, so it's the device driver provider, that makes sense. Contrast that with the driver names for the VMW drivers, aka inbox drivers, apparently first provided with the indicated ESXi Build Number. In my 1GbE example above, that's 5969303.
Looking that up, that means it's from. In my second 10GbE example, it's the older 2494585 released 2015-03-12. In other words, this X557 driver family first arrived in the ESXi 6.0 GA days, which matches up nicely with exactly what happened.
Hope you learned something, feedback left below is always appreciated! Web view of my Netgear XS708T ProSAFE 8-Port 10-Gigabit Smart Managed Switch Footnotes • In my Xeon D-1567 example above, you'll also note that I've got newer I350 igbn 0.1.0.0-14vmw.650.1.
VMWware driver and X557 ixgbe 4.5.3-1OEM.600.0.0.2494585 INTel drivers loaded, here's exactly those were loaded. • The Intel I-350 is also known as i350 and i350-AM2.
• The Intel X552/X557 is also known as 10GBASE-T PHY, Intel X557-AT/ X557-AT2. Nice shout-out from Michael White, in his most recent installment of his weekly newsletter: • Nov 05 2017 by Michael White at Notes from MWhite My approach is short, just 3 lines anybody can paste into XCLI. An admittedly much more thorough approach is what Michael is referring to, it's the vDocumentation tool that my colleague Ariel Sanchez came up with, uses PowerCLI (download 6.5.0R1 ), all the details here: • Aug 16 2017 by Michael White at Notes from MWhite • Oct 29 2017 • Aug 05 2017. Disclaimer Emphasis is on home test labs, not production environments. No free technical support is implied or promised, and all best-effort advice volunteered by the author or commenters are on a use-at-your-own risk basis.
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When you try to install VMware ESXi on some whitebox hardware that is not officially supported by VMware then your attempt might come to an unpleasant end after the installer presented the error message shown above. ESXi has in-box support for a limited number of network interface cards (NICs), and sadly a lot of consumer grade devices are not on the list. Is this the end of the world? If you are a regular reader of my blog then you probably already know that help (and in some cases even rescue) is available. However, I keep getting e-mails from people asking how to get their NIC xyz to work with ESXi.
So I finally took the time to write down all the steps that you need to take and the options you have - just to point them here instead of giving the same answers per e-mail again and again. A very similar post of mine is - it is about a year old now and with 80k pageviews my most successful blog post ever. Let's see how this one goes.
Before you proceed: Are you in a hurry, or just lazy, or do not like to fiddle around with creating customized ESXi ISOs? Then skip to step 7 at the bottom right now and forget the rest! You should also skip to step 7 now if your NIC is a wireless device or connected through a USB port. There is no way to get these working in ESXi, the following steps only apply to PCI based LAN controllers: 1. Find out your device's name and PCI ID The first and one of the most important steps is to clearly identify your NIC's brand and model. The key here is the unique PCI vendor and device ID. There are multiple ways to find this out, and most of them involve booting the machine with another OS (Windows or Linux).
But here is the easiest way that starts directly at the stuck ESXi installation process: When you see the nasty error message displayed at the top of this post then just hit [Alt] and [F1] on your keyboard at the computer's console. Actron Pocketscan Plus 9410 Manual: Full Version Free Software Download more. You will be greeted with a login prompt: log in as root without a password (just hit [Return] at the password prompt). Now run the following command: lspci -v grep 'Class 0200' -B 1 If you do not use an English keyboard you may find it hard to type this command (esp. The special characters -, ' and ), because the English keyboard mapping is in effect regardless of what your layout is. You can change the effective layout by running a command like localcli system settings keyboard layout set -l German This will switch to the German layout. You can list all available layouts and their correct label to be used with the -l switch by running localcli system settings keyboard layout list Alternatively you can keep the English layout and enter all special characters using: - is code 45, is code 124 and ' is code 34. If you finally managed to type the lspci command line correctly then the output will look similar to this: 0000:02:00.0 Ethernet controller Network controller: Realtek Realtek 8168 Gigabit Ethernet Class 0200: 10ec:8168 Here you are: (In this example) you have a Realtek 8168 Gigabit NIC with the PCI ID id 10ec:8168.
A special case: Realtek (and some Marvell) NICs and ESXi 5.5 or 6.0 A while back I posted about. They are still available in ESXi 5.0/5.1 and thus in the VMware Online depot.
So it is quite easy to create a customized ESXi 5.5 installation ISO that includes these ESXi 5.1 drivers (they still work with ESXi 5.5). Use my script for that, and run it like this:. ESXi-Customizer-PS-v2.3.ps1 -v55 -load net-r8168,net-r8169,net-sky2 This will cover the following adapters (PCI IDs): • net-r8168: Realtek 8168 Gigabit Ethernet (10ec:8168) • net-r8169: Realtek RTL-8110SC/8169SC Gigabit Ethernet (10ec:8167), Realtek RTL8169 PCI Gigabit Ethernet Controller (10ec:8169) • net-sky2: Marvell 88E8040 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller (11ab:4354), Marvell 88E8053 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller (11ab:4362). This example will find a version of the driver that is newer than the one that ships with ESXi and thus supports some more Intel NICs (like the I217-LM and -V). If you cannot find your NIC's exact PCI ID in the V-Front Online Depot then you are almost out of luck.
Proceed to step 5 then. Create your custom ESXi installation ISO If you have found a suitable driver for your NIC in the V-Front Online Depot then you can easily built a customized ESXi 5.5 installation ISO that includes this driver by running my script like this:. ESXi-Customizer-PS-v2.3.ps1 -v55 -vft -load net-e1000e This will build an ESXi installation ISO with the latest 5.5 patch level and (in this example) the community supported net-e1000e driver included. An example for ESXi 6.0 could look like this:. ESXi-Customizer-PS-v2.3.ps1 -v60 -vft -load net55-r8168 This will build an ESXi 6.0 installation ISO with the latest patch level and (in this example) the community supported up-to-date Realtek 8168 driver. Google is your friend If you haven't found anything in the V-Front Online Depot then there is still a small chance that someone has already created an ESXi driver for your device that I have not (yet) added to the V-Front Online Depot. The only way to find out is using your favorite Internet search engine!
But please search specifically for a VMware ESXi driver for your NIC! Some people just search for a Linux driver in the false belief that you can use Linux drivers with ESXi. ESXi drivers can be derived from Linux drivers, but this involves modifying and re-compiling the source code, and packaging it into the appropriate format (VIB file or Offline Bundle)! If you are lucky and find an ESXi driver for your NIC then download the VIB file or Offline Bundle and create a customized ESXi installation ISO with it. You can do that with my script. Copy the downloaded file to an empty directory (e.g. C: TEMP) and run the script like this:.
ESXi-Customizer-PS-v2.3.ps1 -pkgDir C: TEMP (And be nice and tell me that you have found a community developed ESXi driver that is not yet in the V-Front Online Depot, so that I can add it there!) 6. Be bold: Create your own driver! Still failing?
Your second last chance to get ESXi up and running with your whitebox is to create an ESXi driver for your unsupported NIC on your own! Warning: This is not a task for the average VMware (or whatever IT) administrator! You need Linux developer skills for this, optimally you are a kernel hacker.
Are you bold? Then go and read my quick start guide! But please do not come back to me with questions on how to set up the build environment and overcome compilation errors - I do not have any skills in this.
Always easy: Go and get a compatible controller! The one thing that will always help you to overcome the 'No Network Adapters' error is simply getting another NIC that is supported by ESXi out-of-the-box. A lot of Intel Gigabit NICs will work, and there are affordable models available, even dual or quad port devices. But before you purchase a new one be sure to check the if it is supported by the current ESXi release. Here is an example of how to use the search mask to find all Intel NICs supported by ESXi 5.5 U2.
Searching the VMware HCL (click to enlarge) You can also use the new of the HCL to check if your NIC of interest is included here. Autocad Keygen Internal Error 2 here. Yet another option: Pass your NIC through to a VM If you were forced to get a new officially supported NIC to get ESXi up and running then you may wonder if you can still make good use of the other unsupported NIC that sits there in your box without a proper ESXi driver.
You can try to pass the NIC through to a single VM using PCI passthrough (aka VMDirectPath). This requires a system that is modern enough to support Intel VT-d (resp. AMD IOMMU), and describes how to configure ESXi for this: Enable passthrough of a PCI NIC as per KB1010789 The host PCI device must then be added to the hardware configuration of a VM which will see the NIC as-is (instead of the standard emulated or paravirtualized vNIC types) so you will need a suitable NIC driver for your guest OS, but it shouldn't be too hard to find that. If your unsupported NIC is attached via USB then you need to use USB passthrough to make it available to a VM. This setup is described in. With the most recent ESXi 5.5 patch (of Oct 2014) this also works with host connected USB 3.0 devices, but this requires some tweaking: In I already described how to permanently enable the required xHCI driver in ESXi. I hope that you find this guide helpful - if you think that some important information is missing then please comment!
Anonymous Hi Andreas, I already done this two weeks ago! But, no response.
So, at time, I'm doing an effort for find the source code of this driver, or suggest to someone to recompile the driver using the last version of the Realtek source driver. The reason because the driver don't work with new chip revisions is the 'microcode' included in the driver.
It is updated in each driver version, and not compatible with newer chips. In any case, I suggest to ALL DEVELOPERS that creates communitty drivers for ESXi that they publish the source code. Like this: Or including the source in the VIB file. JohnU 'booting it with 2 GB RAM will result in the false error message that no network adapter can be detected.'
I wish I'd read the comments on this page earlier! I was used to editing upgrade_precheck.py to get ESXi to install with. Jaroslav Hello, thanks for a great website. I'm trying ESXi 6 on mini-itx motherboard Gigabyte GA-1037UN-EU and I have problem with built-in NICs. There are two Realtek NICs 8168 (id 10ec:8168). I got them working using the net55-r8168 package.
BUT - both NICs works on 100 Mbps/FD only. I change the settings in vCenter to 1000Mbps/FD but it still runs 100 Mbps (reboot didn't help).
This problem is not related to switch port settings/cable - for example previous Xpenology installation or Xenserver installation work on 1 Gbps without any problem. Any idea what can cause this and how to solve this? Thanks a lot. Anonymous I have done that, when i create the new custom ISO to include the VIB for the adapters, the VIB does not get added to the iso, it does the other VIB's i have but not that one. Here is a copy of the script i am using in PowerCLI:. ESXI-Customizer-PS-v2.4.ps1 -v55 -vft -load net-e1000e,sata-xahci,cpu5-microcode,vmware-esx-dvfilter-maclearn -pkgDir C: Users (removed for Security Reasons) Desktop asmtdesk esxibootdrivefiles newesxiiso -outDir C: Users (removed for Security Reasons) Desktop asmtdesk esxibootdrivefiles newesxiiso newisowithdrivers -nsc The Vib it misses is vghetto-ax88179-esxi55u3.vib, which is the VIB for the adapters drivers. Anonymous Dear Andreas, I'm trying to create custom ISO with ESXI 6.0u2 with r8168 integrated, according your manual and tools you've provided.
But, when I'm running ESXi-Customizer-PS-v2.5, I'm getting this: 'FATAL ERROR: VMware.VimAutomation.Core is not available as a module or snapin! It looks like there is no compatible version of PowerCLI installed!' Powercli VMware-vSphere-CLI-6.0.0-2503617 installed.
OS - Windows 8.1 Ent. PATH variables to Powercli - exists. Please advise. Thanks in advance. Cosmozap you've got an awesome blog going here - i've learned a lot! Has anyone succeeded in getting esxi 5.5 or 6.x installing over ethernet (USB or thunderbolt) -- or even getting the installer to recognize thunderbolt ethernet adapters?
In my case (macbook air and macbook pro) the installer runs successfully, but as soon as the esxi kernel boots, it says that no supported network adapters were found. Lspci -v shows only wireless, and thunderbolt ports, but no ethernet-adapter-on-thunderbolt. The latter *does* show up on the same laptops under OSX (with a PCI ID listed in the ESXi driver maps, even), but if the ESXi kernel can't see it on the PCI bus, it can't drive it. Any insights/pointers/experiences?