I'm assuming you found this post because your Realtek NICs (8168/8169, and some 8111E) that you may have had working in prior ESXi releases disappeared, and/or datastores attached to some ASMedia ASM1062 SATA ports disappeared.
So, if the following things are true:
- your ESXi 6.0 host was built with another recognized NIC
- your ESXi 6.0 host has internet access
then the following simple fix should work for you, thanks to Andreas Peetz! The use of older VIBs on ESXi 6.0 is not supported, and your results may vary, especially the Realtek drivers, results are hit or miss.
The Fix:
1) enable SSH (under Security Profile) on the new ESXi 6.0 host, and put it in maintenance mode if it's not already
2) used PuTTY to connect
3) typed in the exact commands seen below, then reboot
esxcli software acceptance set --level=CommunitySupported
esxcli network firewall ruleset set -e true -r httpClient
esxcli software vib install -n net51-drivers -d http://vibsdepot.v-front.de
esxcli software vib install -d http://vibsdepot.v-front.de -n sata-xahci
reboot your ESXi host, and your NICs and your datastores should show up again.
Pretty darn awesome!
Video of the process is included in my more detailed article:
For ESXi 6.0, those ESXi 5.1 VIBs for ASMedia SATA ports and Realtek NICs still seem to be working (but unsupported)
See also
Re: Realtek 8168 chipset NICs and ESXi Beta2
https://communities.vmware.com/post!reply.jspa?message=2410005
How to make your unsupported SATA AHCI Controller work with ESXi 5.5
http://www.v-front.de/2013/11/how-to-make-your-unsupported-sata-ahci.html
by Andreas Peetz
[Release] ESXi-Customizer-PS 2.2 - The ESXi image customization script
http://www.v-front.de/2014/02/release-esxi-customizer-ps-22-esxi.html
by Andreas Peetz
