Realtek 8168 driver broken in esx 5.1

[al_089]

VMware vSphere Hypervisor 5.1  - Realtek 8168 drivers broken between 5.0 release and 5.1 - attempted fresh installs on multiple boxes; driver shows as installed but uplink does not forward traffic. Anyone else having the same problem.

[shaithis]

Yes

I have on-board and add-in....the onboard 8168 works fine. The add-in card with an 8168 auto-negotiates fine but will not talk to DHCP and cannot be reached when forced to static IPs.

Same on 2 identical hosts.

[Linuxs]

Hi,

I have the same problem with the onboard 8168. 😞
The addon 8169 works just fine.

[Tirelibirefe]

I've the same problem.

The onboard 8168 works fine. The add-in card with an 8168 auto-negotiates fine but will not talk to DHCP and cannot be reached when forced to static IPs.

[shakum]

Same problem. onboard Realtek 8111 gets recognized and the installation completes successfully but no DHCP and no traffic.

[Tirelibirefe]

Hello Folks;

I asked to Realtek and the response sent by Realtek is below:

---------

                 We don't know which linux driver in ESXI 5.1. It is a inbox driver and is built by VMWare.

                 We think this inbox driver is too old and isn't compatible with ESXI 5.1.

                 Please request this question to VMWare and wait their response.

Thanks.

-------------

It looks like we have to wait a software update from VMWare.

Does anyone know or has any idea how we can use previous (5.0) inbox drivers ?

Regards

[markpattersones]

My 8168 built in is working fine in 5.1.

[markpattersones]

This raises an interesting topic.

There is nothing Realtek on the HCL yet VMware have drivers built in for them and some of us have been able to use them successfully shaving off cost of lab setups and Oracle servers.

Instead of releasing something that is tested as thoroughly as with  their hcl cards they release a best effort driver at any release which  is pretty cool in my opinion. Nice that I can get 3 NICs for the price of the cheapest one on the HCL. I can see the temptation to not even include this driver as you don't have issues like this..

VMWare are under no obligation to get this working etc. but they are clearly working on this stuff at some level. So without getting the feedback of support tickets how do they learn of these kind of issues in the wild? I would imagine some good information would reduce the cost of their testing and development.

What probably happened here? If the rollback to 5.0 works that suggests that there is nothing in 5.1 that inviolates the 5.0 driver. Or did they change the driver because with 5.1 or even 5.0 they found issues where it didn't quite meet specifications (ie. loadbalancing based on ip hash doesn't work or something else obscure). Or maybe just changed the whole structure of the driver, maybe this one was built from the ground up but didn't get robust testing.

[Tirelibirefe]

Hello;

Well, I reverted r8168 vib to the previous release but the nic isn't still functioning. I didn't understand. Which driver should I revert to get run Realted 8168 add-in nic?

[jmgurley]

I had the Realtek RTL8111E chip in a Gigabyte motherboard (GA-Z68AP-D3).   It would connect initially then fail within 2 minutes whether static or with DHCP.   Added an Intel Desktop Adapter PRO/1000 GT and now its a working esx5.1 whitebox.

[chuckles148]

Hey All

With 5.1 Update 1, I have a realtek 6168b card working, however the next version of the 8168 the 8168E does not.

[aliss]

The MSI FM2-A85XMA-P33 with onboard Realtek RTL8111E chip doesn't work in the current ESXi 5.1u1 and 5.0.0u2. NIC gets detected by ESXi and initially works, but after some packets or time it will stop responding. ESXi uses RTL8168 drivers for this card. I tried many options (tcp offloading, negotiation, link speed) but none helped. The driver seems broken.