Previously when installing ESX it has picked up all devices and automatically installed everything needed to use the server as an ESX host, recently whilst installing a new Dell R710 (a great review of the server can be found on the techhead.co.uk site here) I came across an issue where the additional Network Adapter in the PCI slot was not found by ESX.

The R710 has 4 internal adapters which were found as below:

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After a bit of searching to find out exactly what model of NIC I had (Dell please add part numbers to your delivery notes) I found that the adapter was on the HCL and additional drivers were needed:

http://downloads.vmware.com/d/details/esx_esxi40_intel_82575_82576_dt/ZHcqYmR0QGpidGR3

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After downloading you are left with 2 options (that I know of) to install these:

1.  Write the ISO off to a CD and during the install of ESX you can now specify custom drivers, at this point you would insert the ISO and pick up the drivers needed to use the NIC:

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2.  As I already had ESX installed I went for the second method, I extracted the ISO using WinRAR and the WINSCP’d them up to the host, once this was done I used the esxupdate command to add the drivers as below:

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And the end result is some working adapters !

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The moral to this blog post is always check new kit and make sure you don’t need to install the drivers as part of the build !

If this was 4i I was working on then I would have had to use the Remote CLI to install the drivers as so:

C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware vSphere CLI\bin>vihostupdate.pl –server ESXHOST1 –username root –password XXXXXX –bundle c:\INT-intel-lad-ddk-igb-1.3.19.12.1-offline_bundle-185976 –install