esxi 6 and Intel i211 Gigabit nic

[patrtech]

I have a shuttle DS57U device with Intel i218-LM NIC and Intel i211 nic.  Only the i218 nic is showing up as a available adapter, the i211 isn't available as a physical nic, The hardware compatibility guide shows both of these nics as having drivers in esxi 6, so I'm trying to understand what the problem is and if there is a solution for it? Has anyone any experience with the i211 intel nic in esxi? At the end is the lspci output which shows that i211 as vmnic1, yet its not available in vsphere client under Network Adapter listing or if I try to add a new vswitch.

I211 compatibility:

http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/detail.php?deviceCategory=io&productid=37601&deviceCategory=io&details=1&releases=273&keyword=i211&deviceTypes=6&VID=

8086&DID=1539&page=1&display_interval=10&sortColumn=Partner&sortOrder=Asc

I218-LM compatibility:

http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/detail.php?deviceCategory=io&productid=37653&deviceCategory=io&details=1&keyword=i21&page=1&display_interval=10&sortColumn=Partner&sortOrder=Asc

--------------------------------------

lspci -v | grep Network -A1

0000:00:19.0 Ethernet controller Network controller: Intel Corporation Ethernet           Connection (3)

I218-LM [vmnic0]

         Class 0200: 8086:15a2 (e1000e version 2.5.4-5vmw)

--

0000:02:00.0 Ethernet controller Network controller: Intel Corporation I211 Giga          bit Network

Connection [vmnic1]

         Class 0200: 8086:1539 (igb version 5.0.5.1.1-4vmw_

--

0000:03:00.0 Network controller Network controller:

         Class 0280: 10ec:8179

[Sateesh_vCloud]

Can you check BIOS settings for this Network Adapter?

For some cases like:

Disabled

Set to offline

features not enabled

[patrtech]

I checked the BIOS settings and the options their are limited - basically enabled or disabled, but both NICs are enabled and i tired disabling and renabling.  I also tried restoring BIOS setting to default but no change.  I booted up a Ubuntu 14.04 Live CD and it detected both NICs, I choose the i211 nic and it got an IP fine (i even installed ubuntu to disk and both nics were detected).   When esxi is booting I see its loading modules e1000e and igb which are for both nics, but only the e1000e (nic i218) is available in networking.

[RichardBush]

Hey,

Long shot but could you try this, i had to do it with a L218-V network adapter.

Change the boot order to network then local disk, this should mean the NICs both grab an IP,  then proceed to boot from local disk. I honestly have no idea why this fixed it in my environment but i tried all sorts prior to that.

[patrtech]

Thanks for the suggestion, unfortunately no change.  I don't think the nic's got DHCP addresses because after waiting each nic shows "No boot filename received".

[Visionweb]

Hello,

I have a similar problem. I try to install VMware-VMvisor-Installer-6.0.0-2494585.x86_64 but it's fail during installation, with information: No network card detected. What's wrong? The 2 ethernet seems to be compatible...

[patrtech]

Which Intel cards do you have on your system? You maybe able to inject drivers for them if their available elsewhere.

[Uewel]

Is there any progress to find out the reason for the problem?

I have the same issue on a proprietary server board. The Intel i211 network adapters are not shown in vSphere Client under Network Adapters.

An lspci -p shows the following output (regarding these network adapters):

0000:01:00.0 8086:1539 1775:3700  11/ 11/0x2c A V vmklinux_9   vmnic5

0000:02:00.0 8086:1539 1775:3700  10/ 10/0x2d A V vmklinux_9   vmnic1

0000:03:00.0 8086:1539 1775:3700   5/  5/0x2e A V vmklinux_9   vmnic2

0000:06:00.0 8086:1539 1775:3700   5/  5/0x2e A V vmklinux_9   vmnic3

0000:07:00.0 8086:1539 1775:3700  11/ 11/0x31 A V vmklinux_9   vmnic6

0000:08:00.0 8086:1539 1775:3700  11/ 11/0x2c A V vmklinux_9   vmnic7

0000:09:00.0 8086:1539 1775:3700  10/ 10/0x2d A V vmklinux_9   vmnic8

0000:0a:00.0 8086:1539 1775:3700   5/  5/0x2e A V vmklinux_9   vmnic9

0000:0b:00.0 8086:1539 1775:3700  11/ 11/0x31 A V vmklinux_9   vmnic4

And lspci -v shows:

0000:01:00.0 Ethernet controller Network controller: Intel Corporation I211 Gigabit Network Connection [vmnic5]

         Class 0200: 8086:1539

--

0000:02:00.0 Ethernet controller Network controller: Intel Corporation I211 Gigabit Network Connection [vmnic1]

         Class 0200: 8086:1539

--

0000:03:00.0 Ethernet controller Network controller: Intel Corporation I211 Gigabit Network Connection [vmnic2]

         Class 0200: 8086:1539

--

0000:06:00.0 Ethernet controller Network controller: Intel Corporation I211 Gigabit Network Connection [vmnic3]

         Class 0200: 8086:1539

--

0000:07:00.0 Ethernet controller Network controller: Intel Corporation I211 Gigabit Network Connection [vmnic6]

         Class 0200: 8086:1539

--

0000:08:00.0 Ethernet controller Network controller: Intel Corporation I211 Gigabit Network Connection [vmnic7]

         Class 0200: 8086:1539

--

0000:09:00.0 Ethernet controller Network controller: Intel Corporation I211 Gigabit Network Connection [vmnic8]

         Class 0200: 8086:1539

--

0000:0a:00.0 Ethernet controller Network controller: Intel Corporation I211 Gigabit Network Connection [vmnic9]

         Class 0200: 8086:1539

--

0000:0b:00.0 Ethernet controller Network controller: Intel Corporation I211 Gigabit Network Connection [vmnic4]

         Class 0200: 8086:1539

So, it will be detected but from my perspective the wrong driver (vmklinux_9) was loaded.

Any suggestions?

[FooDaddy]

I know this thread is a bit old, but I was curious if anyone had managed to get ESXi to recognize the i211 adapter. I have a Fitlet-X mini PC I'd like to turn into a tiny, tiny host, and it's got FOUR of these Intel NICs. Unfortunately, I can't even install the hypervisor until I can find a driver to inject. Thanks guys!

[zmiuca]

Hi,

I have the same issue with Asus X99 Deluxe. The I218V is recognized but I211 is not. Have not managed to make it work.

[jhonnypolak]

I'm also trying to get this to work on the Fitlet-X-LAN which has 4 x I211 interfaces.

So far i've tried injecting drivers into

ESXi 5.1u2 with the following versions of the driver:

igb-4.0.17-890403

igb-4.2.16.3-1138313.zip

igb-5.2.5-1682533.zip

ESXi 5.5 with the following version of the driver:

igb-5.2.5-1682588.zip

ESXi 6.0 with the following version of the driver:

igb-5.2.5-1682588.zip

None of these worked.

when listing the ethernet adapters, the actually show up as "detected" in dmesg.

when running: "esxcli hardware pci list",

however the adapters show up as using module: vmklinux_9 (which I'm not sure is right for I211 intel adapters).

The vendor id and device id for I211 on the Fitlet are:

8086:1539  I211  Gigabit Network Connection

Both the device and vendor id are present in all the drivers mentioned above, yet the interfaces are not detected properly by ex.

I've also tried loading the igb (module) manually using vmkload_mod, it loads successfully but the interfaces still don't come up

Interestingly enough in /etc/vmware/esx.conf there are entries for vmnic0 through to vmnic3, yet they don't show up as valid management ports.

I've also tried enabling/disabling IOMMU in the BIOS (since this is an AMD based system), no luck. Adapters still don't show up.

I'm wondering if somehow these adapters are "blacklisted" ?

[peetz]

I investigated this issue and found that the igb driver is refusing to initialize lots of i211 adapters, because their NVM checksums do not match the expected value.

To work around the issue I modified the driver to ignore invalid NVM checksums. The modified driver resolved the issue in at least two cases.

More details are in this blog post:

VMware Front Experience: A fix for Intel i211 and i350 adapters not being detected by ESXi

[je_ga]

I am also affected by this issue.

I appreciate the community-created driver (linked by peetz), but I would like to use an official fix. My HW vendor told me that the i211 is supported by i.e. Ubuntu 16.04. So I tried the current i211 driver from VMWare (https://my.vmware.com/group/vmware/details?downloadGroup=DT-ESXI55-INTEL-IGB-532&productId=353), but it did not help.

Comparing the igb driver sources (igb_main.c, at "NVM checksum" string literal) it seems to me that

• Intel's Linux current reference driver still does the standard checksum test (failing on an i211 without NVM),
• Linux Kernel 4.4.29 driver (used by i.e. Ubuntu 16.04) does an advanced test considering the presence of NVM (which works on Ubuntu 16.04 according to my vendor),
• VMWare's current driver (see link above) only do a hard-coded check regarding the i210 chipset (so the i210 without NVM probably works but the i211 does not).

At the time the forementioned community driver was developed, other OS' drivers seemed to have the same issue (looking at Google results for "i211 igb NVM checksum"). But now that they fixed it, wouldn't it be time for VMWare to provide a working official driver for an officially supported NIC chipset?

I tried to file a VMWare support request, but Free vSphere is not listed as a product in my account. So it seems that I am cannot contact VMWare Tech Support directly, or am I wrong?

Has anyone found an official solution or knows how to push this to VMWare Tech Support?

[mingchun]

Same problem in ESXI 6.5!