Collecting vmnic driver details

[admin]

For VM hosts, what is the best way to get the physical adapter (e.g., vmnic0) driver details? This information is displayed in the vSwitch properties under the Network Adapters tab (screenshot attached). Specifically, I'm looking for the adapter's driver but having the status details would be great.

I've searched online and ran Get-Member against Get-VMHost, Get-VirtualSwitch, Get-VirtualPortGroup, and Get-NicTeamingPolicy.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[LucD · Accepted solution]

The Get-VMHostNetworkAdapter gives you access to that info.

Not directly, but through the Extensiondata property

Get-VMHostNetworkAdapter -VMHost $esx -Physical | Select Name,@{N="Driver";E={$_.Extensiondata.Driver}}

[admin]

LucD wrote:

The Get-VMHostNetworkAdapter gives you access to that info.

Not directly, but through the Extensiondata property

Thanks for the answer.

What's the best way to view the data in the ExtensionsData property? Generally, I'd like to know how to access it. Specifically, I'd like the full driver name (e.g., Intel ABC, Broadcom XYZ, etc.).

[LucD]

The Extensiondata property gives you access to the SDK object.

That means you can use the SDK Reference to see what properties and methods are available.

For example:

$esx = Get-VMHost MyESX

$esx.Extensiondata

contains what is documented under HostSystem.

To retrieve the actual values of the properties you can use the Select-Object cmdlet, like the example above, or any other cmdlet that shows the content of a variable.

It's really useful to have an editor which allows you to explore the contents of variables.

To get the full driver name you will have to access the COS and use one of the native Linux commands.

Have a look at Getting Nic firmware versions with PowerCLI

[admin]

Thanks Luc. Like usual, very helpful!