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ivrudakov
Contributor
Contributor

Newbie question. 1st installation of ESXi. One NIC is missing.

Hello!

Recently I first time installed ESXi 6.5 with Net55-r8168 driver added to ISO. I have 3 NICs in the computer, but I see only two of them, vmnic0 is missing. Here is console output:

[root@localhost:~] lspci -v | grep -A1 -i ethernet

0000:03:00.0 Ethernet controller Network controller: D-Link System Inc DGE-560T PCI Express (x1) Gigabit Ethernet Adapter [vmnic2]

         Class 0200: 1186:4300

--

0000:04:00.0 Ethernet controller Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. P8P67 and other motherboards [vmnic1]

         Class 0200: 10ec:8168

--

0000:06:00.0 Ethernet controller Network controller: D-Link System Inc DGE-528T PCI Gigabit Ethernet Adapter [vmnic0]

         Class 0200: 1186:4300

[root@localhost:~] esxcfg-nics -l

Name    PCI          Driver      Link Speed      Duplex MAC Address       MTU    Description

vmnic1  0000:04:00.0 r8168       Down 0Mbps      Half   00:0b:0e:0f:00:ed 1500   Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. P8P67 and other motherboards

vmnic2  0000:03:00.0 r8168       Up   1000Mbps   Full   c4:a8:1d:7d:a0:fa 1500   D-Link System Inc DGE-560T PCI Express (x1) Gigabit Ethernet Adapter

I thought Net55-r8168 has a driver for D-Link DGE-528T, the card has the same class as DGE-560T... So I don't understand what's going on, cause I have little to no experience with ESXi and *nix in general. How to get it working from here?


Still have no machines in this installation, so it could be easily reinstalled.

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5 Replies
a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

Welcome to the Community,

please take a look at https://www.v-front.de/2015/03/vsphere-6-is-ga-ultimate-guide-to.html‌ which provides information about adding the required drivers to an ESXi v6.x image.

André

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ivrudakov
Contributor
Contributor

André,

if you take another look at the output, you will see, than another card with the same class is working – "D-Link System Inc DGE-560T PCI Express (x1) Gigabit Ethernet Adapter [vmnic2]" with Class 0200: 1186:4300.

And "D-Link System Inc DGE-528T PCI Gigabit Ethernet Adapter [vmnic0]" with Class 0200: 1186:4300 doesn't work, ESXi doesn't see it.

There is no any other driver than Net55-r8168 for 1186:4300 (or specifically for DGE-528T) and Net55-r8168 was already added to ISO.


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peetz
Leadership
Leadership

Hi Ivan,

the driver is loaded for the DGE-528T card, and it should show up as vmnic0.

Since it is not listed by "esxcfg-nics -l" there was probably an error when initializing the card.

Can you please check the host's boot log for related error messages?

In an ESXi shell run something like

  gunzip -cd /var/log/boot.gz | less

to look at the file. Search with "/vmnic0".

Andreas

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

Have you checked the VMware Hardware compatibilty guide found here:

VMware Compatibility Guide - System Search

To make sure that the NIC is supported?

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AlehP
Contributor
Contributor

Hello Andreas,

I checked this log on my side, and just one entry there saying:

..../vmnic0 named as "" .

No errors.

Regards

Aleh

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