Hello all!
I'm experimenting with ESXi on my home computer, but keep running into the "No Network Adapters" error, which I understand is because the 5.5 default drivers don't support the Intel I218-V on my Asus H97M-Plus motherboard.
I've looked through these forums and others, and understand that I can use the ESXi Customizer v2.7.2 to add the Intel drivers. The latest version I can find in a .VIB file is net-e1000e-2.3.2.x86_64 which don't seem to work. The latest version I can fine on Intel's site is e1000e-3.0.4. I've tried using the Customizer to insert that version without success.
Also, I'm trying to run ESXi from a bootable USB drive which I create from the ISO using Rufus-1.4.9
My system specs are:
Asus H97M-Plus
Intel 4790S
32GB DDR3-1600 RAM
What's the next step?
Thanks,
Perhaps a follow up. I'm trying to find a way to convert the Intel driver into a VIB. Is there a way to do that outside of Linux or ESXi? Has anyone had luck with the Intel I218-V? Is there a repository of customized ISOs I could browse?
Got the exact same problem.
Customized VMware-VMvisor-Installer-5.5.0.update01-1623387.x86_64.iso with everything under the sun, didn't work.
Thinking it had to do with driver compatibility, I also tried customizing VMware-VMvisor-Installer-5.1.0.update02-1483097.x86_64.iso to no avail.
My specs:
Asus H97M-Plus
Intel 4690S
16GB DDR3-1600 RAM
Thinking of bying a supported NIC.
Did you find a solution?
No answers yet. I actually just installed Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V and hit the same problem - no driver for the NIC. Perhaps the mobo/NIC is still too new?
I came to the same conclusion on the supported NIC - now just to find an inexpensive supported NIC.
Still hoping to find a solution to the driver issue on ESXi
I even got to the point thinking the motherboard had the network component broken.
To test that I tried installing a debian OS with a live cd I created one year ago. Same problem, no network device.
I created the latest debian live and the network card was identified and a driver successfully installed.
That means the card is new.
I was able to run lspci while on linux. The device identifier is 15a1.That id can be found in e1000e-3.0.4.tar.gz used for customizing the iso.Here is the content from pci.updates
15a1 Ethernet Connection (2) I218-V
Customizing with tgz is deprecated. Maybe that has something to do with it not working.
Without knowing any ESXi internals, I expect the damn thing to be identified.
I'll continue to search a solution, will post updates when I make progress. Please do the same
I'm in the same boat as you guys.
My specs:
Asus H97M-Plus
Intel 4770S
32GB DDR3-1600 RAM
Did anyone try an alternate supported NIC, to see if the rest of the board is supported?
I guess this is just the drawback to trying to go for the latest hardware.
I ordered the Intel PRO/1000 CT. Not cheap, but definitely cheaper than other Intel cards. Oh man, went beyond budget again
According to the german amazon comments it works out of the box with ESXi 5.5It will be delivered tomorrow. Will follow up.Received my Intel PRO/1000 CT network card today.
With it, I got past the 'No network adapters found' issue. No problems so far, the Samsung SSD detected, no driver issues there. Installation still in progress though
This is madness. We have piles of NICs here, including ones with 8039 / 8139 chipsets, 3Com cards etc. etc. These are really really common cards, and not having drivers built into the install pack is a gross oversight that fundamentally undermines the idea of demo software. I have the morning to investigate using this software: so far I have wasted most of it endlessly rebooting the installer to be told "No network card". I have never, ever, come across on O/S before that doesn't support these basic, almost universal cards. Another case of a company becoming too big & successful to understand the needs of it's customers?
Mark,
I don't know the reason behind this, but vmware are deprecating drivers for older hardware with every release. I suspect it has to do with keeping the install base small.
They do maintain the hardware compatibility list, that's their take it or leave it contract. I couldn't say it's inaccurate, however I have a network card that's supported and it's not in that list. I needed other sources to make sure I don't do the wrong purchase.
The product being free of charge, most probably we can complain at our own expense It's kinda the right thing.
I hope the paying folk have it better.
Guys,
in a previous post I mentioned that the samsung ssd was visible. Well, I didn't get to boot it after a successful instalation of esxi on it and from that point on the motherboard started acting strangely, not booting from anything. Had to run the jumper bios reset.
After that I installed anew from the stock iso onto a usb stick and was able to boot from it. No storage adapters were visible though, therefore my samsung ssd was not present in the list.
Here are the steps I took to solve it.
In UEFI BIOS, Advanced>Storage PCH there's an option (storage type something) with 3 possible values: RAID, IDE, AHCI. Chose AHCI. Rebooted the hypervisor.
Followed VMware Front Experience: How to make your unsupported SATA AHCI Controller work with ESXi 5.5 (the first 3 commands) and that installed the required drivers nicely.
I am now able to install VMs onto the SSD.
Preparing my Nobel Prize nomination letter, advising the committee to add Andreas Peetz for next year's peace prize face-off.
Message was edited by: cug1248
Nice workaround - and it's good the rest of the mobo is supported. Not sure I want to pick up a separate NIC, though. Maybe I'll hold out to see if a different/newer version of the I218-V driver works, or if anyone else has ideas. I miss not having VMware, but Hyper-V is working well enough for my needs, and I can spare the overhead for the moment.
I'm also going to futz around with trying to turn the driver into a VIB, and keep scouring the other virtualization forums.
I just got my Intel card today. Looking forward to dropping it into my server and getting ESXi up and running.
I also have a nice 512GB M.2 MSATA card to install, too.
I think I have the solution.
Last year I decided to replace my aging Linux server with a Home Virtualization Server ("White Box"). Previous work required me to evaluate various virtualization options (Xen, ESXi, Hyper-V, etc) and I had selected VMware as best of breed for my customer. Thus I decided on 5.5 for my home machine as well.
Procrastination being a good friend (oh, and I got married), I finally got around to this project in May. Wanting a "cutting-edge" system that would last me several years into the future, I purchased an Intel i7-4790S and ASRock Extreme6. Imagine my surprise when I learned that neither one of my two on-board NICs (I218-V and Realtek RTL8111GR) was supported! Further research indicated that there were no recent Community drivers for these NICs available. The old ones I found all failed. So I purchased the Intel EXPI9301 (~$30) just to get ESXi to install.
After more research, I learned that some people were having success building their own drivers for ESXi. I decided to give this a shot, as it appeared fairly straight-forward and I want a second NIC.
I was mistaken. Building an ESXi driver is non-trivial. I found and followed the excellent guide from "trickstarter" and that helped greatly:
http://www.vm-help.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=4340
So, after much frustration, cursing, late nights, and red wine, I compiled an e1000e driver from the latest SourceForge code that seems to run OK on my Extreme6 / I218-V (see attached).
The usual disclaimers apply: use at your own risk, no warranties implied or given, etc. I'm putting it out there hoping it can help someone. According to the PCI ID file, it should support the following:
1049 82566MM Gigabit Network Connection
104a 82566DM Gigabit Network Connection
104b 82566DC Gigabit Network Connection
104c 82562V 10/100 Network Connection
104d 82566MC Gigabit Network Connection
105e 82571EB Gigabit Ethernet Controller
105f 82571EB Gigabit Ethernet Controller
1060 82571EB Gigabit Ethernet Controller
107d 82572EI Gigabit Ethernet Controller
107e 82572EI Gigabit Ethernet Controller
107f 82572EI Gigabit Ethernet Controller
108b 82573V Gigabit Ethernet Controller
108c 82573E Gigabit Ethernet Controller
1096 80003ES2LAN Gigabit Ethernet Controller
1098 80003ES2LAN Gigabit Ethernet Controller
109a 82573L Gigabit Ethernet Controller
10a4 82571EB Gigabit Ethernet Controller
10a5 82571EB Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Fiber)
10b9 82572EI Gigabit Ethernet Controller
10ba 80003ES2LAN Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper)
10bb 80003ES2LAN Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Serdes)
10bc 82571EB Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper)
10bd 82566DM-2 Gigabit Network Connection
10bf 82567LF Gigabit Network Connection
10c0 82562V-2 10/100 Network Connection
10c2 82562G-2 10/100 Network Connection
10c3 82562GT-2 10/100 Network Connection
10c4 82562GT 10/100 Network Connection
10c5 82562G 10/100 Network Connection
10cb 82567V Gigabit Network Connection
10cc 82567LM-2 Gigabit Network Connection
10cd 82567LF-2 Gigabit Network Connection
10ce 82567V-2 Gigabit Network Connection
10d3 82574L Gigabit Network Connection
10d5 82571PT Gigabit PT Quad Port Server ExpressModule
10d9 82571EB Dual Port Gigabit Mezzanine Adapter
10da 82571EB Quad Port Gigabit Mezzanine Adapter
10de 82567LM-3 Gigabit Network Connection
10df 82567LF-3 Gigabit Network Connection
10e5 82567LM-4 Gigabit Network Connection
10ea 82577LM Gigabit Network Connection
10eb 82577LC Gigabit Network Connection
10ef 82578DM Gigabit Network Connection
10f0 82578DC Gigabit Network Connection
10f5 82567LM Gigabit Network Connection
10f6 82574L Gigabit Network Connection
1501 82567V-3 Gigabit Network Connection
150c 82583V Gigabit Network Connection
1525 82567V-4 Gigabit Network Connection
153a Ethernet Connection I217-LM
153b Ethernet Connection I217-V
1559 Ethernet Connection I218-V
155a Ethernet Connection I218-LM
15a0 Ethernet Connection (2) I218-LM
15a1 Ethernet Connection (2) I218-V
15a2 Ethernet Connection (3) I218-LM
15a3 Ethernet Connection (3) I218-V
294c 82566DC-2 Gigabit Network Connection
Good work!
However I cant seem to integrate this vib into the ESXI 5.5u1 iso.
I have been trying to use the ESXi-Customizer v2.7.2.
The procedure stops after checking the vib file. And I get the error: "The syntax of the command is incorrect."
Is there an alternate way of doing this?
Hi Umbriel,
I'm not sure why the script is breaking, but I've created an offline bundle and attached it to my original post. Using that bundle, I was successfully able to create an ISO using ESXi-Customizer-PS-v2.2.ps1 running in a PowerCLI shell.
Thanks GLRoman!
Worked like a charm. Haven't got anyexperience with PowerCLI yet, but with a few instructions it turned out to work great.
I used the following guide to install PowerCLI: Back to Basics: Part 1 - Installing PowerCLI | VMware PowerCLI Blog - VMware Blogs
Then I followed the instructions for example f) here: VMware Front Experience: ESXi-Customizer-PS
Great, I'm glad it's working for you Umbriel.
BTW, I found the problem in ESXi-Customizer.cmd v2.7.2. If you prefer using that tool, you can fix it by changing the three lines starting at line number 593:
findstr /I /L "<payload" %1 | "%SED%" -e "s#.*<payload name=\"#set %2PayloadName=#I;s#\".*##I" >>%3
echo.>>%3
findstr /I /L "<payload" %1 | "%SED%" -e "s#.*<payload .* type=\"#set %2PayloadType=#I;s#\".*##I" >>%3
to this:
findstr /I /R "<payload.*name" %1 | "%SED%" -e "s#.*<payload name=\"#set %2PayloadName=#I;s#\".*##I" >>%3
echo.>>%3
findstr /I /R "<payload.*name" %1 | "%SED%" -e "s#.*<payload .* type=\"#set %2PayloadType=#I;s#\".*##I" >>%3
Then ESXi-Customizer 2.7.2 will produce an ISO with my VIB.
@GLRoman
I don’t know how to thank you. I’am grateful beyond words.
~ # esxcli software vib install -v /vmfs/volumes/53d24813-58392174-a937-001b210b11d3/test/e1000e-3.1.0.2-glr.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: GLRoman_bootbank_net-e1000e_3.1.0.2-glr
VIBs Removed: daoyama_bootbank_net-e1000e_2.3.2
VIBs Skipped:
After a Reboot...
~ # esxcfg-nics -l
Name PCI Driver Link Speed Duplex MAC Address MTU Description
vmnic0 0000:04:01.00 e1000 Down 0Mbps Full 00:1b:21:0b:11:d3 1500 Intel Corporation 82541PI Gigabit Ethernet Controller
vmnic1 0000:00:19.00 e1000e Up 1000Mbps Full 10:c3:7b:4f:41:b3 1500 Intel Corporation Ethernet Connection (2) I218-V :smileygrin::smileygrin::smileygrin:
A bit off topic but appreciable to this mainboard:
First I had problems with the onboard sata controller, that required some steps:
-from initial BIOS Version to 2104
-boot --> Boot device control --> UEFI & Legacy OPROM
-boot --> Secure boot menu --> OS type --> Other OS
-boot --> Secure boot --> boot option #1 --> UEFI OS *device*
-advanced --> CPU Configuration --> Enable Intel VT
~ # esxcli software acceptance set --level=CommunitySupported
~ # esxcli network firewall ruleset set -e true -r httpClient
~ # esxcli software vib install -d http://vibsdepot.v-front.de -n sata-xahci
You're welcome Peter -- glad I could help.
@Xerloq: We now have three independently-confirmed successful installs. Can you mark this as answered? Thanks.