dlink DGE-528T NIC Card in vsphere 5

[gilreyes]

Hi..Has anyone successfully installed dlink DGE-528T NIC card to vsphere 5? Only got it working for esxi4.1 uprading it to esxi5 failed to upgrade the nic..thanks!

[nalfonso14]

Hi gilreyes, If the Adapter isn't in the HCL of ESX you better use a different Adapter that is. Beeing in the HCL means works with ESX and a propriet driver is available for the Adapater.

http://www.vmware.com/go/hcl

[gilreyes]

Hi Nalfonso.thanks for the reply..I am only using the nic to my whitebox vsphere home lab. Not in production.  It worked pretty well in 4.1

[nalfonso14]

can work, but as it is approved by vmware does not guarantee its operation.. why can operate in 4.1 and not 5.0 :S

[gilreyes]

yes i am aware it's not in vmware hcl.  the nic card is cheap running on my two desktop machines running baremetal esx.  I tried installing it fresh like i did in 4.1 using custom oem.tgz uploaded by "cyber7"  . upgrading the machines using cd image, update manager to esxi5 leave the nic card not being detected at all.

[nalfonso14]

perhaps vmware removed the generic driver that recognized in version 5.0 

[joemuscat]

Hi there. Just to add my twopence worth.

I have a number of these cards in my home environment which worked fine in 4.1 with the help of an updated oem.tgz which I managed to sort by reading a number of the posts on this forum.

Now having updated to 5 they are no longer reconized even with the oem.tgz.

After some searching it seems esxi no longer uses the simple.map to map a device id.

Now each driver has it's own map and ids file. The realtek driver is now standard for the install.

Following a couple of articles i've manged to add the correct device id to the corresponding net-r816.map and now

lspci -n is showing that both my nics are being bound to vmnic2 and vmnic3 respectively.

The only fly in the ointment is that there still not showing in the client.

So I keep searching. Will let you know if I manage.

cheers, Joe.

[CymonZ]

See here...

http://www.vm-help.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=3494&p=13511#p13511

Cheers

Simon

[joemuscat]

Thank you so much CymonZ for the heads up on this.

Works a treat.

cheers, Joe.

[CymonZ]

Hi,

It ywould be nice if you thanked Andreas and Ichi in the VM-HELP forum for it is they that helped me.

Cheers

Simon