I have an AQC108 5Gbps NIC attached to my host. It can be seen using lspci and I am sure that the atlantics driver is installed. But I am not able to see it inside the physical network devices of the WebUI, or adding it into a virtual switch.
[root@localhost:~] esxcli system module list
Name Is Loaded Is Enabled
----------------------------- --------- ----------
......
vmkbsd true true
atlantic true true
vmkusb true true
nrdma true true
......[root@localhost:~] lspci
......
0000:09:00.2 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I350 Gigabit Network Connection [vmnic2]
0000:09:00.3 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I350 Gigabit Network Connection [vmnic3]
0000:0b:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell AQtion 5Gbit Network Adapter [vmnic4]
0000:0c:00.0 Serial Attached SCSI controller: Intel Corporation Patsburg 4-Port SATA Storage Control Unit [vmhba2]
......[root@localhost:~] esxcli network nic list
Name PCI Device Driver Admin Status Link Status Speed Duplex MAC Address MTU Description
------ ------------ ------ ------------ ----------- ----- ------ ----------------- ---- -----------
vmnic0 0000:09:00.0 igbn Up Down 0 Half 00:25:90:c5:a2:34 1500 Intel Corporation I350 Gigabit Network Connection
vmnic1 0000:09:00.1 igbn Up Up 1000 Full 00:25:90:c5:a2:35 1500 Intel Corporation I350 Gigabit Network Connection
vmnic2 0000:09:00.2 igbn Up Up 1000 Full 00:25:90:c5:a2:36 1500 Intel Corporation I350 Gigabit Network Connection
vmnic3 0000:09:00.3 igbn Up Up 1000 Full 00:25:90:c5:a2:37 1500 Intel Corporation I350 Gigabit Network Connection
The motherboard looks like has a Patsburg chipset which has PCIe 2.0
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/codename/29968/products-formerly-patsburg.html
The AQN 108 is PCIe 3.0 x1
https://www.marvell.com/content/dam/marvell/en/public-collateral/ethernet-adaptersandcontrollers/mar...
While physically and electrically compatible (i.e. you can install a PCIe 3.0x1 card into a PCIe 2.0x1 slot without damage to both board and card), just a wild guess...
...it might be the case the software driver isn't happy with it as the bandwidth of PCIe 2.0x1 (around 500MB/s) won't be able to handle 5Gbps (around 625MB/s) and somehow unable to negotiate down to 2.5Gbps or 1Gbps. Presumably, this 5Gbps NIC is connected to a 5Gbps port on the network switch. You could try plugging in to 2.5Gbps or 1Gbps port and see if it makes any difference.
The NIC is not connected to any device, but I think it should show up in the WebUI at least? Currently I am not even able to see it.
