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therealmilo
Contributor
Contributor

Realtek 8111G, nic identified but no flow

I Recently got myself a shuttle ds47. It has dual onboard realtek 8111G nics. Vmware esxi 5.1 identifies the nics as realtek 8168 adapters. The assigned ip and mac address of the nics shows up in my switches, but i can't ping the esxi host, and there is no flow.

any ideas? Or do i just have to wait and see if vmware decides to support these adapters?

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38 Replies
eivamu
Contributor
Contributor

OK, so it seems we have an partial solution to the problem from the original post.

If you want Realtek to work under ESXi 5.5, you will have to provide your own drivers. There are many guides on how to do this, and it works well with my Shuttle DS61 which has a built-in 8111E NIC. However it remains unknown whether that driver will work at all with ESXi 5.5 and 8111G.

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JohnOCFII
Contributor
Contributor

Interesting.

I have a new ASRock 970 Extreme4 motherboard which also has a Realtek 8111 (I believe E, not sure how to confirm).  I have the same behavior that you and others have reported - namely, interface is recognized by ESXi, it comes up, gets an IP address from DHCP server, and will work for about a minute before it stops passing traffic.  Interface still shows as UP.  If I initiate the management network test from the ESXi console, the network starts passing traffic again, but only for a minute.

This is with ESXi 5.0.0 U1 and U3.

FYI, the selected drive in ESXi shows Realtek 8168 - is that what others show?

I attempted your workaround above.  The DCUI won't allow me to leave the Default Gateway field blank, so I put 0.0.0.0 in there.  I got the same results as before (network works for about a minute, then stops).

Is there a way to make the field blank?  What did you do to allow it to function (at least on the local network)?

Thanks,

John

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JohnOCFII
Contributor
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I solved my problem!

I can't believe it worked, but it did.  I can't remember where I read it (surfed so many sites, I saved the text, but not the link...)

Basically, if you had previously loaded a different O/S on that machine, and had only soft rebooted, and not physically removed power from the motherboard, some how -something- impacted the network driver when you rebooted into ESXi.

Here's the quoted text:

"Using vSphere 5 as a bootable USB thumb drive & Win 7 x64 with the RTL8111E. Works fine but if it boots to Windows 7 the Windows Realtek driver screws things up and after a reboot into vSphere the Nic drops out randomly. Only way to fix it again is to turn the whole board of from the PSU and then boot straight to vSphere and then all is fine again. Bit annoying for dual boot Media Centre/vSphere home machines. This might be unique to my Gigabyte board though H67MA-USB3-B3. Tried lots of different power options on the driver in Windows, i.e. disable/enable WOL but nothing helped. Thought i would post this for info!"

I shutdown the server, unplugged it and let it sit for 30 minutes.  I plugged back in and booted straight into ESXi.  It's been working fine for the last 36 hours.

eivamu
Contributor
Contributor

Hi, John

I'm glad it worked out for you. This thread is about Realtek 8111G. It's quite a bit different from E. If you get 8111G to work with ESXi 5.x, please tell us. (8111E works like a charm for us, too.)

Regards,

Eivind

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CMastchenko
Contributor
Contributor

Hello,

Is there a 'fix' to use the realtek 8111g in Esxi 5 ?

(it seems to work for this guy : Life is a learning process: Home Lab - VMware ESXi 5.5 Setup )

I am looking at a shuttle SZ87R6 for my desktop/esxi host using a radeon card with passthrough,

but it has two 8111g chipset, and with the graphic card, I can't put a intel chipset card in it.

Thanks.

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sharik987
Contributor
Contributor

It works!!!  Mini-ITX Asus H81I-Plus \ Realtek RTL8111G 17-03-2014 22-57-57.jpg

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wenlez
Contributor
Contributor

Does your Asus H81I-Plus support Passthrough / VT-D ?   given a supported Xeon CPU? i was considering your motherboard, but now I definitely consider to buy one.

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sharik987
Contributor
Contributor

"translate.google.ru"

The first time I install ESXI, BIOS setup 2 configurations:

"Virtual Technologies - YES", will make it possible to run the Guest OS 64 bit

"UEIF - other OS" - the default is Windows. -Ability to run ESXi 5.5

"Does your Asus H81I-Plus support Passthrough / VT-D? Given a supported Xeon CPU?"

I do not know, you can help Technical support ASUS.

I have DHCP server on RouterOS. I did not make static.

Now one problem:19-03-2014 9-47-41.jpg

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ASLC
Contributor
Contributor

Thank you JohnOCFII,

collector on EXSi "192.168.X.X failed" will show on client's machine. I spent three days with many experiments without success. Finally, JohnOCFII's post helps.

The solution is : disconnect your Ethernet cable and power cord, wait for 30 minutes. then directly boot from ESXi . that is it !

My system configure are: Motherboard ASUS P8Z68-VLX  CPU i7-2600 with RTL8111E NetCard.

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gjerrryfe
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks  john,

i have tried flow your suggestion , it works

my motherboard is H67MA-USB3-B3. too. Smiley Happy

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notatumor
Contributor
Contributor

I have a  ASUS H81M-A motherboar with the Realtek 8111G ethernet adapter integrated, it came in my ASUS M11AD desktop. I had the same issues with ESXi 5.1 update 2, the management would come up and then after a few minutes stop working. I wasn't able to ping the ESXi management interface. Restarting the interface, unplugging and re plugging it in did not work either. I noticed that the default gateway I had set was not pingable. (I blocked ICMP on my gateway which is an openbsd running pf). When I re-enabled ICMP so that ESXi could ping the default gateway and rebooted everything worked fine.

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GGZgidnick
Contributor
Contributor

Here I am with update on the current ESXi 5.5 U1 release that can be pulled directly from (8/23/2014).

  • Still no Realtek support from VMWare what so ever
  • Physical box: Shuttle SZ87R
  • CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1240v3 Hanswell
  • BIOS: Intel Virtual Technologies - ON
  • BIOS: VT-d OFF (Occasionally lost ping to the VM Guests but not to the ESXi itself. VM Guests able to browse the internet and able to access resource on the network)
  • BIOS: VT-d ON (VM Guests running much more stable. Ping in and out. Accessible from outside. Able to access the Internet and network resources)
  • Two Realtek 8111G on board
  • ESXi wont install due to missing drivers. Drivers download/injected as per TinkerTry - Courtesy to Paul Brian. (TinkerTry IT @ home | Install ESXi 5.5 with Realtek 8111/8168 NIC)
  • ESXi boots and recognized the onboard NICs. Gigabit capability cannot be exploited. Running at 100MB Full Duplex.
  • ESXi configured with a default GW / Static IP address (DHCP also tested succesfully)
  • ESXi administered from vCenter (together with other hosts)
  • VM Guests successfully deployed and tested for the past few days. DHCP and Static both work fine.
  • Sophos UTM used as a DHCP server
  • Other ESXi Guest used as PDC and DNS.

Next I am going to deploy vMotion network and migrate the VMs from the first ESXi onto the new ESXi as well as add a miniPCIe Intel Gigabit NIC.

Fingers cross this won't brake anytime soon.

Will keep you updated.

EDIT: Added screen grab from the NIC settings. You can see that although I tried to reconfigure the NIC to clock at 1Gbps, the actual speeds remains at 100Mbps. As long as it works I am willing to pay the toll.

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Nighteyes_21
Contributor
Contributor

I can't believe VMware still aren't supporting the RealTek 8111G chipset.

I've just bought myself 2 x Shuttle SH87R6 and 2 Dual port SYBA Gigabit PCIe which leaves me with an ESXi Host with 3 NICs, none of which can talk out. Seriously Smiley Sad

I've injected the 8168 & 8169 drivers from 5.1 and that allows the host to build but once booted and configured it cannot ping any IP address or be pinged itself.

Having spent the day yesterday scouring the web looking for a resolution it seems my only choice is to by an Intel PRO/1000 if I want to get this working. Then I will have to choose between PCIe graphics pass through or a 2nd PCIe NIC card.

Has anyone else successfully resolved the 8111G issues with 5.5 U1 ?????

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Neoleander
Contributor
Contributor

I am with you on this one.  I stumbled onto this issue recently as well, and just like you came up empty.  In my case I have the 8111/8168 off the shelf StarTech card I found on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00E4KZDJ0/ .   It installs and is recognized with the VIB file I found on the Internet, but ultimately never receives an IP and sits there like a dummy.

From my Install:

/vmfs/volumes/52296b64-c885005b-488e-386077f0a796/Home # esxcli software vib install -v /vmfs/volumes/Home/VMware_bootbank_net-r8168_8.013.00-3vmw.510.0.0.799733.vib

Installation Result

   Message: The update completed successfully, but the system needs to be rebooted for the changes to be effective.

   Reboot Required: true

   VIBs Installed: VMware_bootbank_net-r8168_8.013.00-3vmw.510.0.0.799733

   VIBs Removed:

   VIBs Skipped:

Edit --

Son of a.... I turned the motherboard off (physically moved it) for a period of time, then back on...now it has an IP and passes traffic!

Screen Shot 2014-09-08 at 11.30.17 AM.pngScreen Shot 2014-09-08 at 11.30.39 AM.pngIMG_1806.JPG

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STM256
Contributor
Contributor

I'm currently running ESXi 5.5 on a Gigabyte 990fxa-UD5 (Realtek 8111E), and ESXi is able to identify the adapter (r8168) but it's useless since no traffic is flowing on the adapter.

I had the same problem when running Ubuntu, some times it was working but upon next boot i couldn't get a DHCP lease and no ingress traffic was seen.

And this is way to unreliable in my opinion, so i think there is a reason why vmware removed support for some Realtek NIC's.

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Golli
Contributor
Contributor

Hello,

i haved the same problem with the Shuttle DS47 and the Realtek 8111G with ESXi 5.5. I found a vip File with a never Realtek Driver for the Networkcard 8168 in Version 8.036. I customized  the Installtion from ESXi5.5 with the ESXi Customizer and include the vip File (see Attachemate) in the installation. And see the NIC Cards run. 🙂 Please Test it.

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peetz
Leadership
Leadership

Hi,

the most recent version of the r8168 driver (8.039) is available (for ESXi 5.5 only!) in the V-Front Online Depot now.

This should also work.

See https://vibsdepot.v-front.de/wiki/index.php/Net55-r8168

and VMware Front Experience: What's new in the V-Front Online Depot

Andreas

Twitter: @VFrontDe, @ESXiPatches | https://esxi-patches.v-front.de | https://vibsdepot.v-front.de
mathewfern
Contributor
Contributor

Hi

Can someone please share your experience in setting up Shuttle DS47 with ESXi 5.5 for NIC - Realtek 8111G network card?

Also I wonder this box Shuttle DS47 works well with SSD.


Any replies are much appreciated.

Mathew

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Nighteyes_21
Contributor
Contributor

peetz, many thanks for the links.

I finally got around to installing the .vib and it worked a treat.

For anyone that may need it these are the commands I ran to install...

esxcli software acceptance set --level=CommunitySupported

esxcli software vib install -v /vmfs/volumes/SSD_Datastore_ESX02/Software/net55-r8168-8.039.01-napi.x86_64.vib

You should see:

Installation Result

   Message: The update completed successfully, but the system needs to be rebooted for the changes to be effective.

   Reboot Required: true

   VIBs Installed: Realtek_bootbank_net55-r8168_8.039.01-napi

   VIBs Removed:

   VIBs Skipped:

Then type 'reboot'

Cheers

NE

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