Compatible nic card

[RyanBorgMT]

Hi i have this network card

Winyao WY1000T4 PCI-E X4 Quad Port 10/100/1000Mbps Gigabit Ethernet Network Card Server Adapter LAN  intel I350-T4 NIC

The chip is intel and seems to be conpatible in compatibily list but the brand is not directly intel.. does not work/show up in esxi 6.5

Any taughts or comments please on how i can get it to work.

thanks

Ryan

[dja234]

VMware Compatibility Guide - I/O Device Search

this may help you.

[RyanBorgMT]

The intel I350-T4 is listed as an INTEL card but this is branded as Winyao WY1000T4 with intel I350 chipset... so does it mean it would not work it has to be an intel card and branded intel as there seems to be no way of getting it to work even after trying third party vib driver i have found not a single sign of hope..

[bluefirestorm]

There is the thread at servethehome regarding genuine and counterfeit Intel i350-T4. The post there even has detailed pictures of the differences between the two.

https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/comparison-intel-i350-t4-genuine-vs-fake.6917/

Looking at the eBay page selling the Winyao WY1000T4, the pictures shows the chip to be i350-AM4 and the Intel logo looks suspicious.

I am not here to debate genuine vs counterfeit; nor whether i350-AM4 is different from i350-T4 v1. You can visit the servethehome thread for that.

There is indeed a i350-T4 v2. Unfortunately, it looks like the i350-T4 v1 page is not available in the Intel ARK site. It is unclear if the VMware compatibility guide is referring to v2 or to v1. But the v2 explicitly lists support for VMware ESX/ESXi while the i350-AM4 does not. The recommended price range for i350-T4 v2 is close to 8x the price being offered for the Winyao card on eBay.

http://ark.intel.com/products/84805/Intel-Ethernet-Server-Adapter-I350-T4V2

[RyanBorgMT]

Understood.. maybe it is not genuine as you say.. i will try and find a real car from a real retailer.

Just to make thing clear.. if the card is branded HP or DELL or anything else but then it says 1000 PRO XX and this is marked as compatible.. altough i do not find the model under HP or DELL will it still be fine and work with esxi?

[bluefirestorm]

The thing is there is an Intel i350-AM4 chip based quad port Ethernet controller.

http://ark.intel.com/products/52966/Intel-Ethernet-Controller-I350-AM4?q=i350-AM4

And its recommended price is much closer to the eBay prices of the Winyao card. Unless you paid US$300 for the Winyao, I wouldn't say you were ripped off. Whether they used genuine Intel i350-AM4 chips or rejected chips, you and I have no way of knowing/confirming. At best they are selling a card based on the i350-AM4 chip and offering it as i350-T4.

The i350-AM4 cannot be found in the VMware compatibility guide for ESXi 6.5. There are differences between i350-AM4 and i350-T4v2. One key difference looks to be that i350-T4v2 can support Fibre Channel over Ethernet while the i350-AM4 cannot.

https://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php?deviceCategory=io&details=1&partner=46&releases=338&deviceTypes=6&page=1&display_interval=500&sortColumn=Partner&sortOrder=Asc

As to other cards (whether or not they have a big name server vendor brand on it), you have to check the VMware Compatibility Guide. As always it is caveat emptor whether online or physical retail store. When something looks/sounds too good to be true, chances are it is.

[RyanBorgMT]

Thanks for all your replies.

I have decided to buy another card.. hopefully this looks promising and a google search said it should work just fine out of the box.. any comments welcome

HP NC364T PCI EXPRESS QUAD PORT GIGABIT HP 436431-001 NIC NETWORK CARD 

Description

With 4 Gigabit Ethernet Ports on single 4x PCI Express Bus is an ideal solution for virtualization environment with high bandwidth networks. Its combined ~4000 Mbps increases network performance by reducing bottlenecks and I/O strain on the single server.

Interface Type

x4 PCI-Express

Compatible with x4, x8 and x16 PCI slots at x4 speedPorts4 x 10/100/1000T Gigabit Ethernet ports

Specification:Manufacturer:HP / Compaq

Part Number:HSTNS-BN26 / Nc364T / 436431-001 / 435506-002 / PC4860BPUUR1DL / D72864-001

[bluefirestorm]

HP NC364T is in the VMware Compatibility List for ESXi 6.5

Looks like it is using two Intel 82571EB chips (2 ports per chip).

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/archives_North_America/12701_na_v1/12701_na.HTML

But that chip is rather old (launched Q3 2005) and already End of Interactive Support. The drivers are up to Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 only.

http://ark.intel.com/products/20720/Intel-82571EB-Gigabit-Ethernet-Controller

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/product/20720/Intel-82571EB-Gigabit-Ethernet-Controller

Considering it is an old chip, it may not be capable of PCI Passthrough (if you have that intention) and may not have the necessary drivers for the VMs.

You can get the sense I can be such a party pooper at dinner parties; not that I get invited to parties often in the first place :smileylaugh:

I suppose maybe there is still some use to the Winyao card that you already have; that is if you have intentions of device passthrough. The specs of I350-AM4 indicates support for VT-c and SR-IOV so it is likely this can be used as passthrough network device for VMs. I am guessing (I could be totally wrong about this) that even though the I350-AM4 does not have an ESXi VIB, you should be able to passthrough the device; just as GPUs like Nvidia Quadro/Tesla that are passed through don't have the ESXi drivers but it is the VMs that has the proper GPU drivers.

So maybe you might end up with an ESXi machine with 8 Gigabit Ethernet ports.

[RyanBorgMT]

I will be using this card as my main card in my esxi server as the main network card i will be using it with nic teaming to get 4gbps total  with failover and load balancing so its not for passtrough as you are saying. I will also have my current intel nic as a 5th nic in this team.. im guessing it will work for this setup right??

thanks

ryan

[bluefirestorm]

For whatever it is worth, I added 4 more NICs to an ESXi 6.5 VM running on VMware Workstation and added the four NICs to the same vSwitch. Chances are the HP card you are looking at will be using the same e1000 driver. The DID 100F and SSID 0750 doesn't agree with the VMware Compatibility Guide values of 10d3 and 07d0, respectively for the virtual Intel 82574L.

This is what appears on the VMkernel device manager log.

2017-05-30T07:50:29Z vmkdevmgr[65906]: ADD event for bus=pci addr=m01000208 id=8086100f15ad0750020000.

2017-05-30T07:50:29Z vmkdevmgr[65906]: Found driver e1000 for device bus=pci addr=m01000208 id=8086100f15ad0750020000.

2017-05-30T07:50:29Z vmkdevmgr[65906]: Binding to vmklinux for driver e1000

2017-05-30T07:50:29Z vmkdevmgr[65906]: ADD event for bus=pci addr=m01000210 id=1274137112741371040100.

2017-05-30T07:50:29Z vmkdevmgr[65906]: ADD event for bus=pci addr=m01000218 id=15ad077015ad07700c0320.

2017-05-30T07:50:29Z vmkdevmgr[65906]: Found driver vmkusb for device bus=pci addr=m01000218 id=15ad077015ad07700c0320.

2017-05-30T07:50:29Z vmkdevmgr[65906]: ADD event for bus=pci addr=m02000228 id=8086100f15ad0750020000.

2017-05-30T07:50:29Z vmkdevmgr[65906]: Found driver e1000 for device bus=pci addr=m02000228 id=8086100f15ad0750020000.

2017-05-30T07:50:29Z vmkdevmgr[65906]: Binding to vmklinux for driver e1000

2017-05-30T07:50:29Z vmkdevmgr[65906]: ADD event for bus=pci addr=m03000230 id=8086100f15ad0750020000.

2017-05-30T07:50:29Z vmkdevmgr[65906]: Found driver e1000 for device bus=pci addr=m03000230 id=8086100f15ad0750020000.

2017-05-30T07:50:29Z vmkdevmgr[65906]: Binding to vmklinux for driver e1000

2017-05-30T07:50:29Z vmkdevmgr[65906]: ADD event for bus=pci addr=m04000238 id=8086100f15ad0750020000.

2017-05-30T07:50:29Z vmkdevmgr[65906]: Found driver e1000 for device bus=pci addr=m04000238 id=8086100f15ad0750020000.

2017-05-30T07:50:29Z vmkdevmgr[65906]: Binding to vmklinux for driver e1000

2017-05-30T07:50:29Z vmkdevmgr[65906]: ADD event for bus=pci addr=m05000240 id=8086100f15ad0750020000.

2017-05-30T07:50:29Z vmkdevmgr[65906]: Found driver e1000 for device bus=pci addr=m05000240 id=8086100f15ad0750020000.

2017-05-30T07:50:29Z vmkdevmgr[65906]: Binding to vmklinux for driver e1000

And this is a partial screenshot of the vSwitch configuration. Your intentions for the 4 NIC ports might be different, but I think the gist of it is there.

[RyanBorgMT]

Thats what i need.. my esxi host is installed on bare metal not trough another VM...

Basically i think the load balancing needs to be set to the second option.. IP HASH to get a better result.. at least thats what i have seen on my end from previous experience

Lets hope it works