The motherboard of my Haswell whitebox contains an Intel I217-V network card. See my “Haswell low power whitebox for ESXi and Hyper-V” post for more information. The Intel I217-V network card is not recognized by VMware ESXi 5.x by default. On the VMware community I found a post with the Intel I217-V ESXi driver attached. To enable the Intel I217-V network card you have two options:
- Inject the driver in the ESXi ISO using for example the “ESXi-Customizer” tool. See my blogpost “VMware ESXi 5 whitebox NIC support” for more information.
- Install the driver when ESXI is already installed. You need a supported network card to be able to install ESXi!
Here is a quick overview how to install the driver when ESXI is already installed:
- Download the driver
- Upload the VIB to a datastore by using the vSphere Client
- Start the SSH service on the ESXI server and make a SSH connection to the ESXi server
- Put the ESXi server in maintenance mode, command: esxcli system maintenanceMode set -e true
- Change the ESXi host acceptance level to Community Supported, command: esxcli software acceptance set –level=CommunitySupported
- Install the VIB, command: esxcli software vib install -v /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/net-e1000e-2.3.2.x86_64.vib
- Reboot the system after the following message “Message: The update completed successfully, but the system needs to be reboot“,command: reboot
- When the ESXi host is up make a SSH connection and exit maintenance mode. Command: esxcli system maintenanceMode set -e false
Check if the Intel I217-V network adapter is visible is the vSphere Client or vSphere Web client
Your post was very helpful. I need a hint. Where you downloaded the driver for the interface I217-V? Thank you.
hello !
Change the ESXi host acceptance level to Community Supported, command: esxcli software acceptance set -level=CommunitySupported (the command its ok but whit –level=…)
Thanks! Worked like a charm.
Wow, I have tried mutliple versions
Intel_bootbank_net-igb_4.2.16.3-1OEM.500.0.0.472560.vib
net-e1000e-2.3.2.x86_64.vib
net-igb-4.2.16.8-1OEM.550.0.0.1198611.x86_64.vib
Intel_bootbank_net-igb_4.0.17-1OEM.500.0.0.472560.vib
Intel_bootbank_net-igb_5.0.5.1-1OEM.500.0.0.472560.vib
They all install via ssh successfully, but no I217-V in network adapters after reboot.
The funny thing is that I CAN see and assign the I217-V via direct path PCI to a Windows server Client (SBS2011).
Just going to buy 2 intel NICS that work flawlessly (Intel EXPI9301CTBLK from newegg.com only $30)
thanks !
It worked for me …
Woaw. Well done!
Thanks for this straightforward example, very helpful.
Verified. The net-e1000e-2.3.2.x86_64.vib driver supports the Intel onboard NIC on a ASRock Z87 Pro4 on ESXi5.5U1.
Many thanks to mapd07 ;o)
Thank you very much for this solution. Verified on my new Lenovo TS140 Haswell system!
Regards,
James