Most company use HP, Cisco, IBM network adapter, most of their network adapter drivers include in ESXi 5.x images. But what if your network adapter is other vender? I’m going to show you how to identify and install proper drivers for 3rd party network adapter on ESXi 5.x.
My ESX 4.0 server (HP DL380G7) was working properly for VDI environment. I upgraded the hosts to ESXi 5.x to leverage by new features, but unfortunately 3rd party network adapter didn’t work after installed ESXi 5.1. vmnic0, 1, 2, 3 belong to embedded HP NIC, vmnic4, 5, 6, 7 disappeared in vSphere Client. I’m going to use vmnic4 for example.
Identify network adapter model
The additional NICs model shows as ServerEngine Corp. OneConnect 10Gb NIC on vSphere Client. It doesn’t give me more information.
The two NICs show Unknown PCI device in BIOS, it indicates not a HP NIC.
Search keyword vmnic4 in vmkernel log by command less /var/log/vmkernel | grep vmnic4, you will see ESXi cannot load the driver.
Run command vmkchdev -l |grep vmnic4 to get similar output below:
002:01.0 19a2: 0700 10df: e622 vmkernel vmnic0
In this example, the values are:
VID = 19a2
DID = 0700
SVID = 10df
SDID = e622
Match the IDs in VMware hardware compatibility guide – IO device.
It indicates the network adapter is Emulex OneConnect OCe10102-N
Upgrade firmware and drivers
Looks like that’s a native Emulex network adapter, so let’s search Emulex website….
Driver downloads for VMware vSphere 5.1 states “You must update the firmware and boot code on the OCe11102 and the OCe10102 UCNAs when you install the driver.”
Go to firmware downloads page and download the Off-line One Connect Flash ISO version 4.6.142.0, mount to HP server via iLO and reboot.
Flash Utility finds the network adapters and ask continue, press Y button to start firmware upgrading.
Run command reboot after upgrading complete.
Driver of network adapter actually already includes in ESXi 5.1, so you don’t have to upgrade again, you can run command esxcli software vib list | grep be2net to find out the installed driver version.