Vmware Esxi Nic Driver Version

Lately I troubleshoot some NIC driver problems in VMware ESXi 5.x. 2 Responses to Identify NIC driver and supported driver version for ESXi server. manish says.

Hello, has anyone encountered issues using command ethtool -i vmnicX in ESXi 5.5. In 5.1 this told firmware and driver version, but with 5.5 i get this.

Get started with virtualization for free with the VMware vSphere Hypervisor based on ESXi, vCloud Air Network; Hardened Drivers for High Reliability.

VMware ESX/ESXi 4.0 Driver CD for Intel 82575 and 82576 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter. This procedure has changed since the ESX 3.5 version of driver CD.

Lately I troubleshoot some NIC driver problems in VMware ESXi 5.x. During the troubleshooting I needed to Identify the NIC driver, software version used and the latest driver version supported by VMware. Here are the steps outlined.

Identify the NIC driver and software version:

Make a SSH connection to the ESXi host

Identify all the NIC s by using the following command: esxcli network nic list

In this example you can see that Intel igb and Broadcom tg3 NICs are used.

To identify the driver version of the Broadcom NIC vmnic0 use the following command: ethtool -i vmnic0

firmware-version: FFV7.6.14 bc 5720-v1.31

The output list the driver and firmware version. Run the ethtool command for all different NICs drivers to obtain the driver version. With the introduction of the new native mode driver, ethtool is no longer supported. Using ethtool with a native drivers results in the following  warning Can not get control fd: No such file or directory. The following esxcli command list the driver and firmware version: esxcli network nic get -n vmnic0

Identify the latest NIC driver supported by VMware:

We need to find the hardware ID s of the NIC by using the following command: vmkchdev -L grep vmnic

The hardware ID contains the following parts:

Open the VMware Compatibility Guide HCL webpage and choose IO Devices, Link

On the right you see the Additional Criteria Colum. Enter the VID, DID, SVID and SSID generated by the vmkchdev command

Click the Update and View Results button

The NIC is displayed, click on the Model

Expand the version of ESXi release used. Click on the the Download link if exist.

Download the driver and use VMware Update Manager VUM or use esxcli software vib update command to install the driver.

VMware ESXi 5.5 Driver CD for Broadcom NetXtreme II Network/iSCSI/FCoE Driver Set; Download VMware ESXi 5.5 Version: 1.78.28.v55.2: Description: Driver CD.

VMWare ESXi NIC Driver VMXNET. SaalMaan Jul 27, Incidentally if you upgrade that VM to version 7 you will get another higher level NIC to use as well.

Overview of Upgrading NIC drivers in vSphere Verify your version of ESX and/or ESXi. For an ESX host, SSH to the service console and perform the following.

VMware ESXi 5.5 NIC Driver for Emulex and OEM Branded Adapters. This Emulex NIC driver enables support for Emulex s OCe10102 DID:0700 , OCe11102 DID:0710.

VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5 Driver. Version: This driver enables VMware s vSGA shared GPU capabilities.