How can I use an unsupported networkcard in vSphere 7?

[jannik0205]

Hello Everyone,

When I tried to install vSphere 7 on my PC it said:

"No Network Adapters were detected. Either no Network Adapters are physically connected to the System, or a suitable Driver could not be located. A third Party Driver may be required.

Ensure that there is at least one Network Adapter physically connected to the System before attempting insallation."

Then I found out that my Realtek PCIe GBE Family Network Card is not supported by VMware so I need to integrat the driver in the Installation ISO file.

I read that it is possible to do this with VMware CLI which I have allready installed.

My Problem is that I have no idea how to use it for that, because I found no Explanation in the Internet.

Please send help!

[amohammadimir]

First you need to find your NIC's driver VIB file then you can use Power CLI to inject it to the ESXi image (Image Profile). An image profile will consist of a base ESXi image, but can also be combined with additional VIBs from VMware or third party vendors. They can be used to build your own customised ESXi install media.

[nachogonzalez]

Do you want to do a bare metal installation of ESXi or a virtualized installation of ESXi?

Based on what you requested, here is PowerCLI documentation  Using vSphere ESXi Image Builder with PowerCLI Cmdlets

[jannik0205]

A bare metal installation

[jannik0205]

And the Problem is that it´s not possible to download the recommanded Software there because it´s outdated...

[Lalegre]

In the past i had an issue where after the ESXi installation my NIC was not recognized and to recover it i needed to install the drivers manually. Of cousr you can do an Image from scratch or you can install the ESXi and after the installation mount an ISO and install the driver manually.

This post is what i used in the past several times and it always worked: https://9to5it.com/install-drivers-esxi-host/

Take a look because your issue is easier to fix than you think.

[bluefirestorm]

Short answer is that the Realtek network card can no longer be used with ESXi 7.0 and newer.

Only network cards (as well as other peripheral I/O cards) that are in the VMware Compatibility Guide can be used for ESXi 7.x and newer as these are the hardware with the appropriate native driver support. Realtek is not even in the brand list.

https://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php?deviceCategory=io

The reason is that VMKlinux drivers are no longer supported starting with ESXi 7.0.

This was announced way back in 2017.

https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2017/08/vmware-plans-deprecate-vmklinux-apis-associated-driver-ecos...

The following text is from the ESXi 7.0 release notes

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/7.0/rn/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-70-release-notes.html#p...

In vSphere 7.0, VMKLinux driver compatibility has been deprecated and removed. vSphere 7.0 will not contain support for VMKLinux APIs and associated VMKLinux drivers. Custom ISO will not be able to have any VMKLinux async drivers. All drivers contained in an ISO must be native drivers. All currently supported devices which are not supported by native drivers will not function and will not be recognized during installation or upgrade. VCG will not show any devices not supported by a native driver as supported in vSphere 7.0.

[scott28tt]

This KB article is also relevant to that: VMware Knowledge Base