ESXi Driver Wish List

[omisols]

Reply with the devices (NICs, Storage Controllers etc) you wish to see drivers for in ESXi.

[nick_couchman]

First, maybe this is a better thread for the "suggestions" forum, but it doesn't matter that much.

Realistically, I'd like to see the following:

- AMCC/3ware Storage Controllers. It should be pretty simple to include this in the installer since 3ware has already gone to the trouble of writing the driver. It's just a matter of adding the few KB file to install package! I have enough of these lying around that I can't use in ESX that it would be nice.

Unrealistically, but because I have quite a few of them around, I'd like to see support for the Realtek 8169 GigE chipset.

[omisols]

Thanks Nick for the response. That is a good start. I am just trying to gauge the hardware that ESXi supports. IF there are enough people with a device which has no driver, then we can ask VMware to give us a driver for the device.

[ceemour]

ICH9R Raid Driver

Chris

[stbecker]

I second the Realtek request! I would love to use the on-board interface as opposed to using an add-in NIC.

[ScottChapman]

How about the Intel Gigabit ET dual-port NIC

I know the PCI-ID and have tried mapping that to the existing igx driver, but it appears that the igx driver has hard-coded what IDs it supports.

I would be willing to test it if someone can patch it and send it to me...

[ermockler]

AOE tools

[ScottChapman]

Sorry man, I have no idea what that means...

[nick_couchman]

AOE = ATA Over Ethernet, an alternative network-based storage protocol to iSCSI. It boasts having lower overhead due to the fact that all of the communication is Layer 2 based and there is not IP overhead. The downside to this is that AOE is not routable - you must be on the same Layer 2 segment.

[webjay]

Realtek!!! Why? It's most present NIC at all modern motherboards like ASUS, DFI, Intel. In google you can find a lot of post 'I can't install ESXi at 2 desktop and 2 laptops' / 'I can't install ESXi at my PC' - this product with support only for Intel NIC is suxx.

Realtek Gib ctrl - shoult be at top of wish list.

[Stan007]

ATI SB700/SB800 disc controller for SATA disc for Acer

5535 AMD laptop. Can you assist in getting this to work or supply a driver.

Thanks

Stan

[nick_couchman]

First of all, Intel isn't the only network driver that's supported. 3com, a couple of the Broadcom chipsets, UNM, Forcedeth (nVidia), and a couple others are also supported.

Second, I've uploaded the Realtek 8169 driver for ESXi and the source code to the SourceForge open-vdrives project. You can download the pre-built binary or the source code and follow the instructions for building it yourself. Use at your own risk...

http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/open-vdrivers

[webjay]

Nick, thank you for information and link for drivers. Great work! )) Once again - thank you.

[petrv]

Hi Nick,

thanks for the effort of creating an ESXi net driver for the RTL ... I'd like to do something similar. I'd like to run ESXi on my ASUS P5Q board (which I think is quite popular MB) but the board has Atheros Gigabit Ethernet chip.

So I have got the Linux drivers for Atheros Ethernet including the source code from Atheros website, installed CentOS 3.9 and setup the build environment - I am able to rebuild the net drivers from the ESXi GPL code I have downloaded from vmware.com.

Now the "only" problem is that ESXi needs modified Linux drivers - can you give me a hint how to modify the Linux net driver source code to work in ESXi ? (I am a system programmer but I need at least some info to know where to start).

I saw a few posts from people having P5Q board and trying ESXi so I am sure more people would like a driver for the onboard net adapter.

Thanks,

Petr

[srini66]

Hi Petr,

Thanks for your effort. I have the ASUS P5QL PRO motherboard with the Atheros LAN. It would be great if that driver is included.

I have heard that ESXi U4 has support for ICH10, but as of today only U3 is available for download. How can I download the U4 installable.

Thanks

Srini

[petrv]

Hi Nick,

thanks again for the RTL driver ! I have a question - do you happen to have the original linux driver source code on which is your driver based ? I'd like tu run a diff to see what has to be changed

so I can try to modify the Atheros GbE driver ...

Thanks,

Petr

[ajeeves]

I second the ICH9 RAID request!

Andy

[webjay]

AMD 790GX -> AMD SB750 - for Phenom II CPU...

[jhtapia]

I too would have liked to see support for Realtek Gigabit networking (the two built in NICs on the MSI X58 Platiinum motherboard). I wanted to try ESXi. I ended up installing WIn 7 as host for VM Server instead.

[hron]

Via Rhine driver.

--

Gabor Garami

hrgyster@gmail.com