So, I just bought myself a shiny new Intel dual-port gigabit ET card, and installed it into my ESXi 3.5 host.
Do I need to re-install ESXi for it to recognize and use the new card? Or is there something else I need to do?
You'll just need to plug it in and restart the host. Assuming it is a supported, NIC they should just come up as the next 2 vmnicX. I haven't seen this with ESXi, but with ESX sometimes the vmnics will get renumbered due to addition of a NIC, so it would be a good idea to backup the config of your ESXi host before adding the NIC.
Crap. Not showing up. SO, two obvious questions follow:
1) Any way to confirm that it isn't supported?
2) any thoughts on what I can do (aside from returning the card)?
You might want to try a little hardware troubleshooting first. In these situations I like putting the hardware into a system with an OS that I know will see it (if it is functioning correctly). Put the NIC in a windows XP/2003 system (Or a desktop friendly Linux distro like Ubuntu) and verify functionality. If it works on the other system you have ruled out an obvious hardware failure. Try the NIC in another slot on the ESX host.
Interestingly I see intel quad port cards listed, but not their smaller dual-port brothers.
Would I expect those to work?
For example
Intel PRO/1000 PT Quad Port Gigabit Ethernet Controller is listed, would the dual-port version of the card also work?
I was able to modify the oem.tgz, and I verified that after rebooting the entries to the simple.map and the pci.ids both took.
But when I ran the VI Client, I still could only see my other controller.
I am assuming that I would see a second controller when I follow the "Network Adapters" link on the configuration tab for the host. Is that right?
Any way to diagnose what's going on?
Generally I you have a supported NIC you would just plug it in, boot up and it would show up in Configuration \ Network Adapters. At the console, if you run lspci -p does the device show the e1000 module and a vmnic name?
01:00.00 8086:10c9 8086:a03c 10/ 10/0x71 A V vmnic1
01:00.01 8086:10c9 8086:a03c 0/ / B V vmnic2
But I am not seeing them in the config/network adapters display.
