As many of you know, the onboard Intel NIC (8086:0d4f) found in the 10th generation of the Intel NUC (Frost Canyon) is not automatically recognized by ESXi and requires an updated ne1000 VIB which was released earlier this year. An unfortunate side affect after patching or upgrading an ESXi host which contains this modified ne1000 VIB is that it will be replaced by a newer version of the VIB and causes the NIC to no longer be recognized again.
A quick workaround is to simply re-install the modified ne1000 VIB and network connectivity will be restored which is less than ideal. A new vSphere Image Profile can also be created that contains both the patch/upgrade you intend to apply along with the modified ne1000 VIB, ensuring that you remove the newer version which may not be ideal as well. In speaking with Songtao, a VMware Engineer who I worked with on the USB Network Native Driver for ESXi, about this issue and he came up with a very simple solution. Lets choose a different name for the VIB module which removes all the complexity mentioned above. This solution would allow for both drivers to coexists and more importantly, it is persistent across patching and upgrades of ESXi.
UPDATE (02/17/21) - The community ne1000 VIB has been incorporated into the new Community Networking Driver for ESXi Fling
For detailed instructions on incorporating the offline bundle using either the vSphere Image Builder UI or Image Builder with PowerCLI, please refer to this blog post.
Lastly, a number of folks have also inquired about support for other related Intel I219 network adapters. I am happy to report that our friend Songtao was able to help with this request. In addition to enabling the NIC on the Intel NUC 10, we have also added an additional 15 devices which are listed below.
- 8086:0d4e - Ethernet Connection (10) I219-LM
- 8086:0d4f - Ethernet Connection (10) I219-V
- 8086:0d4c - Ethernet Connection (11) I219-LM
- 8086:0d4d - Ethernet Connection (11) I219-V
- 8086:0d53 - Ethernet Connection (12) I219-LM
- 8086:0d55 - Ethernet Connection (12) I219-V
- 8086:15fb - Ethernet Connection (13) I219-LM
- 8086:15fc - Ethernet Connection (13) I219-V
- 8086:15f9 - Ethernet Connection (14) I219-LM
- 8086:15fa - Ethernet Connection (14) I219-V
- 8086:15f4 - Ethernet Connection (15) I219-LM
- 8086:15f5 - Ethernet Connection (15) I219-V
- 8086:1a1e - Ethernet Connection (16) I219-LM
- 8086:1a1f - Ethernet Connection (16) I219-V
- 8086:1a1c - Ethernet Connection (17) I219-LM
- 8086:1a1d - Ethernet Connection (17) I219-V
These additions were mainly added due to the feedback from the community but also because these devices were related to the same family of NIC, this is not meant as a general enhancement or support for other network adapters. Hope folks enjoy this update and I would love to see how you are using this VIB and what platforms it is enabling you to run ESXi!
Nice to see this. Thank you for adding the support quickly.
Hey William, any updates on this TPM issue? Are you going to do.a write up?
Matt,
There's not been a consistent process in properly clearing the TPM keys which has worked for other folks. You can see my notes at https://www.reddit.com/r/intelnuc/comments/hcjtp4/nuc_10_esxi_tpm_attestation/ and one of the customers I'm working with mentioned they'll be reaching out to Intel directly but I've not heard back
Hi Will,
Yes I’m the OP in the Reddit post, unfortunately yes the process didn’t work for me either even including a TPM reset via jumper.
I suspect the issue lies in how the TPM is disabled in BIOS, could you share your BIOS settings please?
Thanks!
Nothing special, it’s all defaults and TPM is disable and SB is enabled
Hi William, can I translate this blog to Chinese and post it? I could refer this article in the translated article.
If William approves, please make sure you clearly show and link the source.
yes, understand.
Hi Owen,
Can I ask why you want to translate the article and repost it else where? Is this something you do on a regular basis or something unique about this article? Have you taken a look at Google Translate to see if that gives you what you need?
Hi William,
It's unique for this article.
Actually, I came across Songtao in a Chinese BBS several weeks ago and he explained why i219v rev11 didn't support by this VIB at that time.
When I found your update in this article around ne1000 VIB update, I shared this article link to some homelab fans in a telegram group (All Chinese). And some of them use i219 rev11 or later, they could not understand English very well, and asked me to translate this article for them.
Regards,
Owen
Okay. Please reference and link to this at the original source article and share link when you’ve got it
Hi William,
I have 2 NICs in my setup, PCIe card: 8086:10d3 and onboard: 8086:0d4d.
I have installed ESXi 7.0 and the PCIe card worked straight away. After installing the "ne1000 VIB (offline bundle)" mentioned above the onboard nic works but the PCIe card nic stops working. Is there any way I can get both of these working?
Cheers
Brian
Does this offline Bundle run on ESXi 7.x?
Thanks.
Please take a look at the requirements on the Fling page
What about the new I225 nic's? Can't seem to find a way to get it to work on ESX (tried 6.7 and 7.x). Does that offline bundle also supports the new intel ?
No, these aren’t supported
Hi William,
thanks for the article and vib.
Unfortunately i'm getting with that driver on my nuc10 only 100mbit, is something known?
Using esxi ESXi-7.0U1c-17325551
Hi William,
I am trying to run esxi on KVM, which can produce e1000 NIC with PCI ID [8086:100e], which is not on the VIB's PCIID list.
Is there an easy way to hack it and try it out? Understood this is unsupported for sure.
Thanks,
Sean
Hi William,
Great job! May we expect some updates for community ne1000 VIB in the future?
Stay tuned 🙂
Hey,
where I can get the version for 6.7? All link to download this are unavailable!? You have the VIB for me? 🙂
Intel-NUC-ne1000_0.8.4-3vmw.670.0.0.8169922-offline_bundle-16654787.zip
Regards and nice Job! 🙂
I'm also searching for a VIB for 6.7u3. Any luck finding it?
try this for the driver. it work for my esx 6.7
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1STTBpypLCOnzGszqgUjwIIWQ0eMjAqc6/view?usp=sharing
any ISO with this driver?