Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5764M Gigabit Ethernet

[jrmunday]

Hi All,

I've just purchased a high-spec HP Z800 workstation that I'm using in my home lab, and need VIB/drivers for the onboard "Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5764M Gigabit Ethernet" NIC's.

The bare-metal installation works fine, but any nested ESXi hosts won't install without any available NIC's - has anyone used this before and have a links to where I can download the VIB?

I'm probably going to get hold of a second hand Intel NIC to get around this, but it would be great if anyone has done this already and has any tips.

Thanks,

Jon

[cykVM]

As per HCL the tg3 driver should work with the BCM5764M: VMware Compatibility Guide: I/O Device Search

[jrmunday]

Thanks for the suggestion, I'm afraid this doesn't seem to work. I did see that the baremetal installation is using a later version tg3 driver, so it's odd that this doesn't work for the nested hosts.

I created a custom ISO by injecting this driver into the build, but still didn't work ... I guess my options are to pass through a NIC or add a supported Intel NIC.

Thanks,

Jon

[cykVM]

Are you sure you are on the right track here? From what I know about nested installations you add virtual NICs to the VM(s) running the nested ESXi. You have to enable promiscious mode and some other settings (e.g. at least 2 cores) for nested ESXi to install.

See for example: http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2012/08/how-to-enable-nested-esxi-other.html or VMware Front Experience: How to provision nested ESXi hosts on free ESXi

The tg3 driver itself should be always included on the ISO.

[jrmunday]

Yes, I have run nested labs for ages (although never been forced to use promiscuous mode), so was quite surprised that the tg3 driver works for baremetal but not for nested ... I might try an earlier version of ESXi to see if that works?

With regards to the driver being included the ISO, yes this was already there but a later version. I replaced this with the earlier driver that you pointed me at and it still failed to recognise the NIC's.

Any other thoughts appreciated - thanks!

Cheers,

Jon

[npadmani]

I am still confused Jon, why do you need device driver of physical NIC in your VM guest OS (which in your case ESXi)?

your bare metal ESXi install went successfully, it has picked up right device drivers for physical NICs, those are your VMNICs.

within this environment now you have created a VM with required amount of memory, vCPUs and at least 1 vNIC or more. [which vNIC adapter type did you select, E1000?]

now if you try to install ESXi OS within this VM, it should not fail with the message that you don't have NICs. and it has nothing to do with actual physical NIC you have in your hardware.

[cykVM]

That's what I am, confused about, too. If the physical NIC is not passed through the nested ESXi VM won't be able to see the physical adapter.

[jrmunday · Accepted solution]

Ok, I've resolved this ... and boy do I feel like a dork. It turns out that in my haste to deploy the VM, I only gave it 2GB RAM ... as soon as I increase this to 8GB it works perfectly.

Here is the VM with 2GB;

And now with 8GB;