Where can I get/extract vmxnet3 x64 drivers (from ESX 5.5) for 2012 Server R2?

[COS]

Easy points up for grabs!!!

[weinstein5]

I am curious why you need them? - installing VMware tools will install the necessary drivers -

[SteveW8]

I too am looking for these drivers. 

The reason for my search/inquiry is a sequence of events:

- Windows Server 2012 crashes with PSOD using the e1000/e1000e drivers.

- VMware workaround is to use the vmxnet3 NIC.  VMware KB:    ESXi 5.x host experiences a purple diagnostic screen with errors for E1000PollRxRing a...

- My servers have been 100% stable since switching to this configuration, *however* in testing a recovery from a network backup...

- Windows Server Preinstallation Environment does not appear to recognize this NIC

- Hence I cannot locate network backups nor perform a network restore operation. 

- WSPE does offer an "install driver" option, but where are the VMware vmxnet3 drivers?

- VMware Tools does not install to the WSPE environment.

- I have looked on the VMware Tools CD on a running VM and only located the ...\Drivers\scsi items - no network drivers

- Looking at http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=101171... there should be more than the scsi folder, but there is not.

I'm fine with having a standalone installable set for Win Server 2012 (and later for 2012R2) rather than needing to add it to the Win Server CD if that is possible as I can put that on the local datastore.

So I am in agreement with COS that the drivers are needed as Windows Backup network image restores are not presently usable.

As this is this company's first ESXi 5.5 virtualization project, it's entirely possible something is being missed, so any feedback as to what to look at or where to locate the drivers would be appreciated.

Thanks

[timlane]

C:\Program Files\Common Files\VMware\Drivers\vmxnet3

FIrst your will need edit settings to remove your adapter, then add the vmxnet3.  If you already have VM tools installed it should just install the vmxnet3 nic at boot.

[timlane]

And you can always just enable SSH on the host, use WinSCP and copy the windows.iso from the ESX host to your desktop and burn that ISO.

[continuum]

Extracting the driver from windows.iso is not trivial at all.

I would suggest you create a Server 2012 VM, install the tools and make sure that the vmxnet3 nic works.

Then either use a driverbackup-tool or find the directory for vmxnet3 in the driver cache dir of the 2012.

That should both produce a directory with an inf-file plus the associated sys-file plus eventual dlls.
You can then wrap this directory into an iso which can be attached to a running VM easily.

Inside the guest you can then istall the driver by selecting the inf-file

[SteveW8]

Thanks for the feedback.  I had been looking on the VMware Tools CD/ISO and not on the running system.

The environment is 2 operational Server 2012 VMs on one host (1 DC and 1 Exchange Server) already using the vmxnet3 NICs so I have access to the directory timlane noted.  I have the ISOs sitting on a file server so they are mountable from a vSphere client for installation or ISO burning purposes.

Progress so far is that I have a "used 1x" workaround (not a statistical sampling) that allowed the WSPE to find the needed backup:  In creating the VM on the fail-over host, I created the needed (in my case) 2 vmxnet3 NICs when configuring the VM, then I added a E1000 NIC.  The WSPE then booted and was able to use the E1000 to find and restore the network image backup.  Then I disabled the E1000 in the Device Manager, shut down the Win2012 VM, removed the E1000 NIC, and rebooted.

As this is still a test environment, there was not much synchronization nor backed up email to download and thus stress the E1000 NIC after the restore completed, but we have assigned static IPs to the vmxnet3 NICs and thus incoming email would be routed to these and not the E1000 after a restore.

Minor note is that the Windows Image Backup restore process needs to see the image file at the root of the file share specified via WSPE - it cannot be within a subdirectory.

Today I'll test timlane's suggestion and pull the drivers from the running machine, create a disk with these, and see if the WSPE will read them on the fail-over back to the original host.  This would be the preferred solution as the network load on the host in production using an E1000 might be enough to trigger the PSOD in the above workaround.  Until this is fixed in 5.5, there is no way to know for sure.  Once I can get the drivers loaded to WSPE via CD, I may also try my hand on loading the driver into the Server 2012 ISO with the Windows Automated Installation Kit.  I'll add to this as progress is made.

[SteveW8]

Progress.

Plan A: An initial attempt to create a Server 2012 ISO with the VMware vmxnet3 drivers embedded did not work as expected, so that will be on the back burner for a while until I get some free cycles to figure out where I went awry.

Plan B: I put all the VMware drivers into a CD ISO image and uploaded it it with WinSCP to the local datastore.  I then added a 2nd virtual CD/DVD drive to the VM. Now, with a newly created VM, with 2 x vnxnet3 NICs and 2x CD/DVDs, the WSPE boots from CD/DVD 1, and I can mount the drivers to CD/DVD 2. Installing the vmxnet3 driver from CD/DVD 2 allows finding the network share drives and the image restore files and the restore runs as expected to completion. 

No E1000 NICs were involved in the process.

For my purposes, I consider this item "answered" - kudos to timlane for the info that was sought that led to a resolution to my situation. That said, I'm not sure I can mark it as "answered" since it's not my original thread. If someone can tell me how to do it I will.

[timlane]

Glad you got it resolved!

[SJThorne]

I needed the NIC drivers to add to a windows boot image.

On a Windows 2008 R2 server all the VMWare Tools drivers can be found in the following location:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\VMware\Drivers