ESXi 6.5a, Cable modem pass through to VM...not working...any idea ?

[DavidinCT]

Hey all,

I've done this a ton of times now. . I my system was a ESX 5.5, all was good (ran into a problem but, it seemed strait forward). I take the cable modem, plug it into a network port, create a new vLAN,, create a Port group with the NIC that has the cable modem, drop it into 1 VM and it always worked like a direct connection. This is a copper connection, not a USB or anything like this... a standard RG-6 cable.

Nuked the server, put 6.5a on restored my VMs, same VM, do the same thing, it's not working. The server just gets a 169.254.X.X address, so no connection to the cable modem.

Any tips on this one ? I'm not exactly a NooB when it comes to VMware but, I am banging my head on a wall on this one.

The server it is on is a DL380 G7... using the onboard Intel NICs (should be fully compatible with VMware but, I would not think this is the issue)

[AishR]

It would be helpful to look at the /var/log/vmkernel.log, /var/log/vmkwarning.log. The VM logs which is the /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/VM/vmware.log, anything you can see on these? Are the NICs being seen properly by the ESXi host? Also review the VMware Compatibility Guide to make sure there is no additional NIC drivers that needs to be installed on the ESXi host. The logs will need to be reviewed more for sure to get more details on the issue.