ESXi 5.1 nic recognized but unusable

[lgardner]

OK please hang in there while I try to explain.  I have the following motherboard:

http://www.intel.com/cd/channel/reseller/apac/eng/products/server/boards/up/s3000ah/feature/index.ht...

It shows up with the following two nic's (macs removed)

Name    PCI           Driver      Link Speed     Duplex MAC Address       MTU    Description

vmnic0  0000:03:00.00 e1000e      Up   1000Mbps  Full   00:**:**:**:**:** 1500   Intel Corporation 82573E Gigabit Ethernet Controller

vmnic1  0000:04:05.00 e1000       Up   1000Mbps  Full   00:**:**:**:**:** 1500   Intel Corporation 82541GI Gigabit Ethernet Controller

Both get link light.

I am able to install and manage the ESXi through vmnic1 the e1000 nic just fine.  But if I try to use the other nice vmnic0 as the management network nic or set it up in its own vSwitch for a VM it does not work!

At first I thought ok it must be bad.  So I threw an ubuntu disk in and tested it, it works fine!  I'm able to do whatever I want through that nic.  So i'm thinking there must be some issue with ESXi and maybe e1000e drivers?

I don't know any help is appreciated!

Please help

thanks in advance!

[lgardner]

OK no responses yet.  Is it possible to change the driver from e1000e to e1000?  I don't know just throwing that out there.

[abhilashhb]

Have you tried installing e1000 drivers on first NIC?

I just searched if there are any bug fixes related to your issue. There are none. So maybe its driver mismatch.

[lgardner]

How would you overwrite the drivers of the e1000e?

[lgardner]

Added a new nic to get around crappy nic support.

[viejay]

hi.

I have the same situation with a build in intel 82753E 82753V. Until know I have no stable runnig situation. But I found out, that whenever I set net network card to trasceiver = external it works for 4 or 5 pings. After this period of successfull pings the card seems to be restted to transceiver = internal and the network seems to be offline.

If you have no a working situation, please write a note here. Thanks!

[lgardner]

I apologize for not closing this.  No I never found a solution that allowed for the present cards to work.  My solution was to install another card that was listed as supported.  An intel enterpise card.  😞

[rseiler9497]

You just need to install the community Intel e1000e driver. I'm not sure which version added support for the 82573E, but 3.1.0.2 worked for me. I believe 2.5 and higher is all that is required.

Note that for some reason the included version even in ESXi 5.1U3 is 1.1.2-3 which is odd since that is really old.

The 82573E NIC will then show Intel Corporation 82573E Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper) which indicates it now has a driver that understands the correct transceiver.

Instructions can be found here:

Adding multiple drivers to an ESXi 5.5 u2 ISO | Kihltech

Re: ESXi 5.5 ASUS H97M Plus, Intel I218-V "No Network Adapters" Error

Intel® Download Center

/Rick