ESXi

Hi Experts,

I came across a strange problem about the Network adapters section:

• I was installing the ESXi 5.5 in a standalone Machine (baremetal)
• During installation, It showed me the error about No Network adapter Detected & I checked the compatibility guide and found it was not a supported NIC.
• Then I did install "VMware Workstation 10" on the same machine on the host OS
• I created a VM and tried to install "ESXi" inside the VM [Just for curiosity\
• It did installed perfactly without any error/warning(s).

My concern is "How & Why ESXi comes up with two different behaviors between Installing at Bare Metel Machine v/s installing inside a VM on the same physical host.

Thanks for your response in advance and I apologies if I am not able to present the scenario with clarity.

-Kuldeep Singh

VMware workstation uses different driver packages.  Your ESXi install must of been missing the VIB's/Driver for that particular NIC.  What server are you running on or which NIC was it.  You can always add these drivers in after the installation or re-package the ESXi installer with the driver so you don't have to worry about it.

If you have any questions please let me know,

Hi JPM300,

    I appreciate your reply on this.

I was trying a demo installation for learning purpose on a laptop which was having Realtek 8168 NIC with it. I know how to replace the 8168 driver and re-create a CUSTOMIZED ESXi 5.5 Update 2 iso file.

But my question is:

JPM300 wrote:

VMware workstation uses different driver packages.  Your ESXi install must of been missing the VIB's/Driver for that particular NIC.  What server are you running on or which NIC was it.  You can always add these drivers in after the installation or re-package the ESXi installer with the driver so you don't have to worry about it.

If you have any questions please let me know,

If a NIC is not supported in a bare metal installation of ESXi 5.5 then How it can be supported within the Same Host using the Same NIC under a VM created by Workstation 10.

Under vmware workstation, the virtualized esxi is using the virtual nic driver (probably E1000), which is supported.  The Host OS is using it's own realtek driver.

When you try to run ESXi on bare metal, it doesn't have a realtek driver, so it fails.

This is a driver issue.

What Dent13 said,

Workstation is using the OS's driver to supply the NIC to the Virtual Enviroment opposed to the bare metal install where if the ISO doesn't have the driver it simply won't see the NIC.  Windows for the most part usually has at least a default driver it can use for most NIC's these days.