Why does ESXi 6.7 HCL list some later ixgben drivers than others?

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

AveryFreeman

consummate homelabber
Mar 17, 2017
413
54
28
42
Near Seattle
averyfreeman.com
Hey,

so I have two X540-T2 10GBase-T cards. One is a `Dell K7H46`, the other is a `Supermicro AOC-STG-i2T`.

Was having some stability issues with the Dell card, so I went to update the driver, the inbox driver for `ESXi 6.7 9214924` was `1.4.5`.

I don't remember installing the driver in ESXi for the Supermicro card, but I must have and forgotten, because `esxcli network nic get -n vmnic2` shows `Version: 1.7.1`

Anywho, for both devices, `vmchkdev -l | grep nic` shows:
Code:
0000:03:00.0 8086:1528 15d9:1528 vmkernel vmnic2
0000:03:00.1 8086:1528 15d9:1528 vmkernel vmnic3
On both machines, so they're both basically the same card (same vendor ID and device ID, `8086:1528`).

However, on the VMware IO dev guide website searchy thingy, the Dell card recommends downloading version 1.6.5, but I already have 1.7.1 installed for the Supermicro card...?

Does anyone know why the drivers recommended for these cards might be different?

And where did I get this driver I don't remember installing...??! I'm sure I must've but I just can't remember where it's from...
 

Rand__

Well-Known Member
Mar 6, 2014
6,626
1,767
113
Doesnt each vendor have to provide the compatibility check test results? Maybe one didn't do so...