Supported NIC not being detected during installation

[hormel09]

I'm trying to install vSphere Hypervisor 6.0.  It said there was no network device detected.  I found the NIC's Vendor and Device ID within ESXi console.  I then found it's page in the VMware Compatibility Guide. The page says it is supported in 6.0 and that it's inbox.  Any idea of what could be causing this error?

Edit: I can't seem to get the hyperlink working in this text editor, not can I paste links.  So here is a screenshot of the NICs page

[bradley4681]

what is the NIC model? Is this in a name brand server, HP, Dell, etc?

[hormel09]

I just updated the original post after seeing the hyperlink didn't work. It's not server hardware haha.  It's an old laptop.  Lenovo Thinkpad z61

[bradley4681 · Accepted solution]

ah, what's most likely happening is that 6.0 doesn't have the proper drivers for the system chip-set and bus so it's not detecting any NICs because it's actually not detecting parts of the motherboard.

There were a lot of older drivers removed in 6.0 that allowed 5.5 and below to work on non server hardware. You best bet is to install vmware workstation and install it inside of workstation for testing.

[hormel09]

My ultimate goal was to run pfSense behind everything on my network including VMs and physical machines.  ESXi being a type 1 hypervisor looked like a good candidate for making this happen.  Workstation looks like a type 2 hypervisor.  Can I do such a thing with Workstation?  If not, would it be bad to run ESXi 5.5?  Or should I start looking into other options: Oracle VM Server, Xen, Windows Server, ect. 

[bradley4681]

you can try 5.5 but getting esxi to run on something like a laptop is difficult, it does have a large amount of devices in the HCL but you'd be hard pressed to get it working.

Wouldn't you want pfSense infront of everything on your network? I believe it requires at least 2 physical network connections to provide a public interface and a private interface. if everything was virtual that you wanted behind it you could create a private network in workstation pro and put your vm's in it and the pfSense vm could have a virtual nic connected to that private network and a virtual nic that was attached to the network of the physical nic in the configuration. You wouldn't be able to provide protection to other physical devices on your network through.

Security wise you need something with more then one physical nic if your trying to create a firewall

[hormel09]

Tried 5.5, installed on the first try!  Yeah, you are right; firewall is in front of everything.  You're also right about having two physical NICs.  My plan is to get a mini PCI-E to PCI-E adapter/ribbon.  Then connect a pci express NIC.  Virtual NICs will connect all the VMs to pfSense.  pfSense will then have an onboard NIC and the Frankenstein NIC for WAN and LAN.   Hopefully that adapter won't cause any problems in ESXi.