Intel i354 - Avoton/ Rangeley With ESXi 5.5

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Patrick

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Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
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The default installation media of VMware ESXi 5.5 did not include the updated igb driver for Avoton/ Rangeley based products such as the C2750 based Supermicro A1SAi-2750F.

I did find the following on the VMware site after searching for downloads

igb 5.0.5.1 driver package

That one is supposed to work with the Intel i354 network adapter. For the guide, you can use the same method found in this: ESXi with the Intel i210 and i350 network adapter guide

One caveat is to use the VIB not the tgz file.
 

Patrick

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Dec 21, 2010
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Here is a screenshot with this all working. Note: No DirectPath I/O on the Avoton/ Rangeley platform:
 

vegaman

Member
Sep 12, 2013
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Hmm, hopefully that's just a driver issue. It's disabled if you install async drivers like you had to, but the only built-in drivers with SR-IOV support are for the 10GbE cards/chips.
 

vegaman

Member
Sep 12, 2013
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Auckland, New Zealand
At the moment only the Avoton boards seem to be available. And only on Amazon at $550 or $600 depending on the seller.
I've also found a potential pitfall in my plan of getting a Rangeley board, apparently the US government is controlling exports because of the Quick Assist crypto acceleration.
 

Section09

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Dec 10, 2013
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Hi there. So how goes the testing with ESXi? Would this be feasible for a VMware home lab? Maybe 2 or 3 for a cluster? Thanks!
 

JimPhreak

Active Member
Oct 10, 2013
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I followed your guide Patrick but I'm unable to get any of the 4 NICs in my SuperMicro A1SAI-2558F after installing the custom ESXi 5.5 ISO (using the vib file injected in).

Am I missing something? I used these drivers.
 
Last edited:

Biren78

Active Member
Jan 16, 2013
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I followed the guide and it worked way back when I did it. I don't know why yours isn't.
 

JimPhreak

Active Member
Oct 10, 2013
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I followed the guide and it worked way back when I did it. I don't know why yours isn't.
I know. It seems very straight forward but no matter what I do the NICs are detected. I know the NICs are working because I was previously using this board in a pfSense box.