USB Ethernet for 6.5.0

[DNSGeek]

I acquired a very nice notebook; 2.7GHz i7, 16GB RAM, 128G SSD and 1T spinny disk. I’d love to use it as a small ESXi server for my home to do some Linux dev work. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have a built in NIC, only WiFi.

Is there a USB 1/2/3/SS A/B/C dongle that’s supported in 6.5.0 that can do 100/1000? I can’t find any data anywhere. That’s the only thing stopping my use of this system.

Any pointers would be appreciated. I don’t have vSphere and the install of ESXi stops with a message that there’s no supported NIC so I can’t even do a basic install and then try to patch it. It needs to be supported out of the box with 6.5.0.

Thanks!

[mprazeres183]

Hi DNSGeek,

I have a great article for you: Check the virtuallyghetto https://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2017/01/functional-usb-c-thunderbolt-3-ethernet-adapter-for-esxi-5-5... article.

You will have it resolved with this for sure!

Best regards,
Marco

[DNSGeek]

Thanks, but unfortuntely, that requires vCenter and the ability to patch an already installed ESXi server.

I can’t install ESXi at all. It refuses to install because it says I have no NIC. I’m a single guy at home, not a business, so I don’t have another server to install ESXi on to try to patch there. I don’t have vCenter.

I need a NIC that works out-off-the-box on a laptop, or I can’t even install ESXi at all.

[daphnissov]

Then I'm afraid you're going to be between a rock and a hard place of all you have is a laptop. No laptops or their I/O devices appear on the HCL, so therefore no driver support for them. You should instead consider getting one of several different small PCs like Shuttle or Intel NUC that do have at least built-in NICs you can leverage.

[bluefirestorm · Accepted solution]

You need to find a USB Ethernet that uses a NIC chipset such as Intel or Broadcom that is supported out-of-the-box. For example, the Apple Thunderbolt 2 Ethernet uses a Broadcom chipset and the ESXi 6.5 installation on a 2014 Macbook Pro just uses the same tg3 driver for certain Broadcom NICs.

Unfortunately, search on the web turns up these USB Ethernet are either ASIX or Realtek. Plus, I don't know whether ESXi will recognise it automatically the way it did for the Apple Thunderbolt Ethernet.

You do realise that you need another machine if you install ESXi on this laptop to access whatever VM(s) including the one for Linux development.

Alternatively, you could use a desktop virtualisation software such as VMware Workstation Pro/Player. If you still want to get your hands on having an ESXi you can still create an ESXi VM with Workstation/Player and that can have as multiple virtual Intel NICs that is supported by ESXi.

Hopefully, the i7 CPU you have is a 4C/8T HQ series and not one of those ultralow voltage 2C/4T U series that throttles down a lot under heavy load.

Workstation Pro/Player 14 requires the CPU to have EPT and VMX unrestricted guest features (Westmere and later i7 should be good to go).

Workstation Player 12.5.8 is still available for download.

One warning though Player 12.5.x does not handle Kaby Lake CPUs properly in the event you want to use virtualised performance counters. I have no idea if 14.x can identify the Kaby Lake-R CPUs properly (the 8th gen i7).