ESXi drivers for USB 3.0 Gigabit Ethernet adapters based on the ASIX ax88179178a or the Realtek RLT8153/RTL8152 chipsets. Realtek driver updated to version 2.06.0-2 (Scatter Gather disabled). Install ESXi on a server/laptop with only USB Ethernet 3 minute read VMware Weasel hack to allow installation of ESXi on server/laptop with only a.
In this article, we’ll consider how to add (inject) drivers into the ESXi 6.7 installation ISO image. Despite VMWare ESXi image is certified (supported) for most popular server models, it doesn’t contain hardware drivers for all of them (unlike Windows). If you try to install ESXi 6.7 image on a typical desktop computer, you are likely to face the situation when you don’t have a driver for some hardware (RAID controller, video card or network adapter, etc.) in your installation ESXi ISO.
The most frequent error you see when trying to install ESXi from the original ISO image on a desktop computer is ‘
No Network Adapters
’. Indeed, the ESXi image doesn’t support most of LAN NIC adapters. To install ESXi on such a computer, you will have to inject the drivers for your network adapter into your ESXi installation image.Let’s see how to add a driver to the VMware ESXi 6.7 installation ISO. In this example we’ll show how to integrate the driver for Realtek network adapter into the VMWare ESXi image.
To customize ESXi images VMware recommends using official tool – vSphere ESXi Image Builder. But is it very specific and requires vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA). Most system administrators use a third-party tool ESXi-Customizer instead.
How to Find and Download Drivers for VMWare ESXi?
First of all, you must to find drivers for your hardware. You can search for them in VMware Compatibility Guide section on VMware website, on the vendor website, on the website of ESXi-Customizer author’s (https://vibsdepot.v-front.de/wiki/index.php/List_of_currently_available_ESXi_packages — I have downloaded the driver
net55-r8168
for my Realtek network adapter here) or using Google search (something like “Realtek NIC drivers for ESXi
”).Please note that you need the driver in one of the following formats: .vib, .tgz or .zip (offline bundle).
You can also find the drivers by device VID. Boot your computer using Linux LiveCD and find VID and DID of your device, for example, by running this command:
lspci -nn
Using these IDs, you can search .vib drivers in the Web.
How to Inject a Driver into ESXi Image Using ESXi-Customizer GUI Tool?
ESXi-Customizer is a graphical tool with a simple interface that allows you to make the integration of drivers and .vib files into ESXi ISO automatic. Twilight princess rom gamecube iso.
The main drawback of ESXi-Customizer is that it only supports ESXi versions 4.1, 5.0, 5.1, and 5.5. This script has not been updated since 2016. So when trying to create an image for a newer ESXi version, an error appears.
Download ESXi-Customizer-v2.7.2.exe (https://www.v-front.de/p/esxi-customizer.html), extract the archive and run the tool (ESXi-Customizer.cmd). ESXi-Customizer does not officially support Windows 10, so when started in Windows 10, this error appears:
To fix it, edit the ESXi-Customizer.cmd file and comment the following line (add REM in the beginning):
if '!WinVer!' LSS '5.1' call :earlyFatal Unsupported Windows Version: !WinVer!. At least Windows XP is required & exit /b 1
Save ESXi-Customizer.cmd file and run it again. In the next window, specify the path to the original ESXi ISO image, the driver file (VIB file or TGZ archive with drivers) and the folder, to which the resulting ISO image with the integrated driver must be saved. Uncheck the automatic update option.
Click the Run button and after a few minutes a new ESXi ISO image will appear in the target directory. You can use this image to install ESXi on your hardware.
Adding Drivers Using the PowerShell Script – ESXi-Customizer-PS
The ESXi-Customizer-PS (https://www.v-front.de/p/esxi-customizer-ps.html) PowerShell script can be used to integrate drivers and updates into the ESXi 5.x and 6.x install image. To use this script, VMware PowerCLI 5.1 or newermust be installed on your computer.
Download ESXi-Customizer-PS-v2.6.0.ps1 file (unblock the PS1 file downloaded from the Internet by checking Unblock in its properties) and start PowerCLI. Run the command:
Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned
You can display help on the script parameters as follows:
ESXi-Customizer-PS-v2.6.0.ps1 –help
To download the latest ESXi 6.7 ISO image version with the latest updates from VMware Online Depot website, run this command:
.ESXi-Customizer-PS-v2.6.ps1 -v67
In the same way you can download other ESXi versions (-v67 | -v65 | -v60 | -v55 | -v51 | -v50).
To generate an ESXi ISO and immediately inject all offline bundles and VIB driver packages from C:distresxidriver, use this command:
.ESXi-Customizer-PS-v2.6.0.ps1 -v67 -pkgDir C:distresxidriver
In 15-20 minutes, the installation ESXi ISO image will appear in the targer directory.
You can modify the downloaded offline bundle (it is a ZIP archive with the ESXi installation files) by adding to it all VIB drivers from the specified directory:
.ESXi-Customizer-PS-v2.6.0.ps1 -izip .VMware-ESXi-6.7.0-9484548-HPE-Gen9plus-670.10.3.5.6-Sep2018.zip -pkgDir C:distresxidriver
Using the following command, you can create an ESXi ISO from your offline bundle:
.ESXi-Customizer-PS-v2.6.0.ps1 -izip .VMware-ESXi-6.7.0-9484548-HPE-Gen9plus-670.10.3.5.6-Sep2018.zip
In V-Front online storage there is a large VIB driver library, and you can integrate the specific drivers from this depot into your ESXi image as follows:
.ESXi-Customizer-PS-v2.6.0.ps1 -v67 -vft -load sata-xahci,net55-r8168,net-e1000e,esx-ui
In this example, we’ll integrate these drivers into the ESXi distribution:
- net-e1000e – a network driver for Intel I21782579LM/82574L;
- net51-r8169 – Realtek 8168/8111/8411/8118 NIC driver (it has been removed from ESXi 5.1 and newer);
- esx-ui — ESXi Embedded Host Client — a convenient host web interface (used by default from esxi 5.5);
- sata-xahci — map driver to correctly identify some SATA controllers.
As a rule, for most computers it is enough to add the following drivers into the ESXi image:
-v60 -sip -vft -load net-e1000e,net51-r8169,net55-r8168,esx-ui,sata-xahci,net51-sky2,esxcli-shell
To update the offline bundle with the latest patches from VMware repository, run this command:
.ESXi-Customizer-PS-v2.6.0.ps1 -v67 -izip .VMware-ESXi-6.7.0-9484548-HPE-Gen9plus-670.10.3.5.6-Sep2018.zip -update
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Background / Problem
- I have two new servers (Dell R720 & Dell R520) that I plan to install ESXi onto.
- During the VMWare Hypervisor installation, I'm told that no network adapters exist.
- Upon checking, I realized that the Broadcom NetXtreme I drivers are required additionally
- I have obtained the Broadcom driver software bundle from VMWare's web site
- I have installed PowerCLI on my desktop in case I will need it.
Question
Most ESXi guides describe doing this on a server that's already been set up once, but I am installing ESXi on these boxes for the first time.
- How do I properly get these network card drivers into the installation process?
- I am under the impression that I may need to configure a custom installation package that includes these drivers (and use PowerCLI to do this) -- if so, how do I best go about doing this?
Esxi 6.7 No Network Adapters
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4 Answers
Which version of ESXi are you trying to install. I think the drivers for those are now included in 5.1 (I might be wrong though).
Alternatively, you can try to use the Dell customized build of ESXi ISO to install VMWare and see if those include the required drivers you need.
RexRex7,45233 gold badges2323 silver badges4343 bronze badges
Another way that can work:
- Download the offline software bundle for the NetXtreme I cards from VMWare.
- Download the ESXi Customizer software
- Extract ESXi customizer
- Run ESXi customizer as an administrator.
- Select the ISO file
- Select the .VIB file for the drivers
- Select an output directory
- During the installation, allow ESXi customizer to replace the VIB file
- ESXi Customizer creates a bootable ISO.
- Use the custom ESXi ISO to install.
A huge thanks for these tools as they are the only thing that allowed me to get this done quickly.
I'm going to wait to see how the Dell ISO works out and then try this one. I'll mark the answer as correct in that order of which one works.
References
SeanKilleen![Vmware Esxi Realtek Network Driver Vmware Esxi Realtek Network Driver](/uploads/1/2/4/8/124883904/567380514.jpg)
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Make this easy on yourself - get the Dell-provided ESXi images. Those should have all the hardware things you might need.
mfinnimfinni33.2k33 gold badges4343 silver badges8080 bronze badges
If you use ESXi 6.0 or ESXi 6.5 or newer, you must use ESXi-Customizer-PS. The Windows desktop app: ESXi-Customizer is deprecated.
ESXi-Customizer-PS is a free tool from the same author that runs under PowerCLI and you can also inject a driver into ISO ESXi install.
Reference: http://www.sysadmit.com/2017/01/vmware-esxi-instalar-driver.html
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Realtek Driver
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