Intel X540 and ESXi Issues

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CookiesLikeWhoa

Active Member
Sep 7, 2016
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Hello all,

Hopefully someone will be able to shed some light on a problem I'm having. I recently picked up a Supermicro server with quad Intel X540 integrated 10Gb ports. I proceeded to install ESXi 6.5 on the system and was greeted by "nfs4client failed to load" and no network adapters found. The nics had a connection; lights on the nic were on, as well as the switch and the switch saw the link as up.

Work around was to put an old intel i210 nic in the system to get ESXi installed and booted up. When looking at the PCIe passthrough under advance settings I could find the x540's to passthrough, but they were not available to the system to use. I downloaded the drivers from the Intel site, but it already had the same drivers.

Anyone have any recommendations on where to go from here?
 

acquacow

Well-Known Member
Feb 15, 2017
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Hmm, I have the 540s working just fine in esx 5.5, haven't upgraded yet, but I'll keep this thread in mind when I do upgrade.

If the cards are on-board and not technically in a pci-e slot behind a switch, you may need to enable "VMkernel.Boot.disableACSCheck" in order to be able to get the check boxes to un-grey and pass them through to a VM.
 
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CookiesLikeWhoa

Active Member
Sep 7, 2016
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That's probably my issue. I assumed (whoops) that Intel would have the latest drivers, but they are the 3.7.13 version and didn't bother to check Vmware. I'll try those when I get back.