Community Networking Driver for ESXi

This Fling is a collection of ESXi Native Drivers which enables ESXi to recognize and consume various PCIe-based network adapters (See Requirements for details). These devices are not officially on the VMware HCL and have been developed to enable and support the VMware Community.

VMware ESXi 7.0 (x86) or newer is required
Any PCIe network adapters with VID/PID listed below are supported

igc-community

Vendor	Chipset	VendorID	ProductID
Intel	Ethernet Controller I225-LM	0x8086	0x15f2
Intel	Ethernet Controller I225-V	0x8086	0x15f3

e1000-community

Vendor	Chipset	VendorID	ProductID
Intel	Ethernet Connection (6) I219-LM	0x8086	0x15bd
Intel	Ethernet Connection (6) I219-V	0x8086	0x15be
Intel	Ethernet Connection (7) I219-LM	0x8086	0x15bb
Intel	Ethernet Connection (7) I219-V	0x8086	0x15bc
Intel	Ethernet Connection (10) I219-LM	0x8086	0x0d4e
Intel	Ethernet Connection (10) I219-V	0x8086	0x0d4f
Intel	Ethernet Connection (11) I219-LM	0x8086	0x0d4c
Intel	Ethernet Connection (11) I219-V	0x8086	0x0d4d
Intel	Ethernet Connection (12) I219-LM	0x8086	0x0d53
Intel	Ethernet Connection (12) I219-V	0x8086	0x0d55
Intel	Ethernet Connection (13) I219-LM	0x8086	0x155b
Intel	Ethernet Connection (13) I219-V	0x8086	0x155c
Intel	Ethernet Connection (14) I219-LM	0x8086	0x15f9
Intel	Ethernet Connection (14) I219-V	0x8086	0x15fa
Intel	Ethernet Connection (15) I219-LM	0x8086	0x15f4
Intel	Ethernet Connection (15) I219-V	0x8086	0x15f5
Intel	Ethernet Connection (16) I219-LM	0x8086	0x1a1e
Intel	Ethernet Connection (17) I219-V	0x8086	0x1a1f
Intel	Ethernet Connection (17) I219-LM	0x8086	0x1a1c
Intel	Ethernet Connection (17) I219-V	0x8086	0x1a1d

Step 1 - Download the Offline Bundle zip file for the Community Networking Driver for ESXi and upload to ESXi host using either SCP or Datastore Browser

Step 2 - Install the ESXi Offline Bundle by running the following command on ESXi Shell to install ESXi Offline Bundle:

esxcli software vib install -d /path/to/the offline bundle zip

Step 4 - Reboot the ESXi host for the change to go into effect. Once the host has rebooted, ESXi should now allow be able to claim and use the network adapter.

Note: For the Intel NUC 11 (Pro/Performance), you will need to incorporate the Community NVMe Driver for ESXi into a new ESXi Image Profile before you can install. You can use either the Image Builder UI in vCenter Server or Image Builder CLI with PowerCLI.

February 17, 2021 - v1.0 (Initial Release)

Net-Community-Driver_1.0.0.0-1vmw.700.1.0.15525992_17594603.zip
md5: 23eb1a3084b096333ea5789fbfb86ef2

Known Issues:

The igc-community driver currently does not include optimization features such as TSO/CSO/VLAN stripping

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