add pNIC after ESXi 5 installation

[Saadat]

Hi,

Can we add physical NIC to ESXi Server after we have installed ESXi 5 to the box? Will ESXi 5 detect the new physical NICs?

I have a home lab at home with a beefy server which I have VMware workstation 8 installed on it.

I have created 7 VMs to be as my ESXi Servers, one DC and one vCenter Server (All VMs)

My original configuration for ESXi VMs was to have 8 NICs in them to do some testing. (specially dVS)

after the 4th ESXi VM I forgot to add NIC Cards while I was creating the VM and installed ESXi with only 1 nic card.

After adding the esxi to my vcenter I recognized my mistake. So I shutdown the ESXi and added 7 more NICs.

My assumption was after rebooting the ESXi, the new NICs will be detected. But apparently not.

I know that I haven't hit any maximums in my VMware workstation 8 because in ESXi6 and ESXi7 I remembered to add NIC Cards before the installation and I can see them in my vCenter Server.

What am I missing? Is it because the ESXi are nested or even in Physical environment if I add NICs, they will not be detected after the reboot?

I am pretty sure this was not the case in vSphere 4.

Thanks

[arturka · Accepted solution]

Hi

maybe insted E1000 vNIC you've added VMXNET card ? I have this same setup like yours and every time when I add new vNIC to my virtual ESXi discovers new adapter

Cheers
Artur

Please, don't forget the awarding points for "helpful" and/or "correct" answers.

[Virtualinfra]

Add a new NIC E1000 and do vmtools installation once again.. you should be able to see those NIC there..

[arturka]

Dharshan wrote:

Add a new NIC E1000 and do vmtools installation once again.. you should be able to see those NIC there..

VMware tools on ESXi server ?

Cheers
Artur

Please, don't forget the awarding points for "helpful" and/or "correct" answers.

[Virtualinfra]

Good Question appericated....

ESXi will have its own drivers - But still we can install the drivers for some special hardware for which the driver is not bundled with ISO..

I will check that..

[Saadat]

@ Artur - You are right.

Since these VMs are Shared I don't see Network type through the GUI in VMware workstation.

So when I went to the vmx file I noticed the difference.

The new NICs didn't have this line:

ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"

So I had to add the line and change the ethernet# for each NIC.

And that solved the problem.

Thanks a lot.