We have a number of 5.0 U1 servers that I would like to just update the vmxnet3 NIC drivers. I copied the 5 vmxnet3 driver files from a 5.5 U2 server and updated the driver via the update driver option under the vmxnet3 properties of the NIC. I updated the driver, the version shows the new version, and no problems have been experienced since the update. Is this a supported way to update the NIC driver on a VM guest Windows 2008 R2 server.
Thanks
TJ
IMHO vmxnet drivers comes with vsphere hypervisor and depends on it... I think this could be unsupported. I suggest to upgrade hyper visor before update Vmware tools.
I understand that updating to latest Hypervisor is the preferred method but that is not an option at this time. The vmxnet3 NIC driver is a VMware driver, not 3rd party.
Per the interoperability matrix, it appears that VMware Tools that comes with vSphere 5.5 are supported on VM's running on ESXi 5.0 Update 1. If you use automation tools to upgrade VMware Tools, those same automation tools could be used to update the vmxnet3 driver along with VMware Tools.