Last spring, VMware and Aquantia (now part of Marvell) collaborated and delivered their first ESXi Native Driver for their AQtion (Atlantic) based 10GbE network adapters. This new driver was primarily focused on enabling network connectivity for ESXi when running on either an Apple 2018 Mac Mini (8,1) and Apple 2019 Mac Pro (7,1) that included the 10GbE networking option. Consequently, this driver also benefited the broader VMware Community as it enabled additional 10GbE networking through a number of Thunderbolt 3 to 10GbE network adapters that customers could now take advantage in their VMware environments.
With all these benefits, VMware has decided to inbox the Aquantia/Marvell driver with the latest ESXi 7.0 Update 2 release, so that customers no longer had to create a custom ESXi Image Profile that included the driver, which was always required when installing ESXi on either the Apple Mac Mini or Mac Pro that were configured with the 10GbE networking option. For a complete list of supported Aquantia/Marvell AQtion based network adapters, please see the VMware HCL.
Here is a screenshot of an earlier release of ESXi 7.0 Update 2 running on the 2018 Mac Mini which now automatically recognizes the 10GbE network adapter out of the box.
Thank you as always William! 🙂
May i know where do you get build 17209792? The lastest iso build downloadable from vmware is 17630552. The nics are recognised on boot.. but traffic are still not passing through..
I just completed the install and run into the same issue, any clue when this actually will work as it doesn't seem to work with the current shipping version 7.0 U2
Thank you William.
Hey William; first of all, thanks so much for providing so much direction to the community in order to get up and running on newer Macs; I would've been totally lost without these resources.
Just wanted to report the following: I'm on 2019 Mac Pro, and I've been able to successfully install ESXi 7.0U2. Both of the 10GbE network adapters are detected, and the connection state is reporting correctly. However, nothing on the management network works beyond this; no DHCP, no VLANs are detecting, no static IP or DNS configurations. I'm connected to a 1GbE router, and I've tried setting the NIC speed down to 100 as suggested in other posts, but no dice. The network has been validated on the same system under macOS.
I've been wrangling this one for a while now... If you have any insight that could steer me in the right direction, that would be amazing!
Andrew,
That seems strange. Assuming you've got all the right network configurations applied to ESXi, you may want to debug by removing some variables. Can you try non-VLAN setup (e.g. native VLAN) for testing and see if connectivity is successful. Maybe connect your laptop directly to host and see if you can reach out and make sure there isn't any physical errors.
Hi William,
I see the same issue as Andrew and I have tested the direct connection between Mac/pc and the ESXi on both ports. Nothing fancy, no VLAN etc. there is no response in either direction but the interface shows up and connected in ESXi. Any suggestions?
Thank you very much for your efforts.
Kind Regards
Anthony
Hi Anthony,
Is this also a Mac Pro 2019? If so, this system is not officially supported by VMware and usually the best course of action would be to reach out to GSS for further support. Let me try to reach out to Marvell folks to see if they have any thoughts but in the meantime, if either of you can generate and provide link to support bundle, that'll be useful
Hi William, yes its a 2019 Mac Pro. I see if I can get a support bundle and provide you a link. Thank you for your support in this matter.
Hi William,
just a quick update, I just build a 6.7 U3B image with the drivers and this works as expected.
Hi William,
I did send you a link to the support bundle to the address listed in your profile on this site. Please let me know if you need anything else. I really do appreciate you are looking into this even if the system is not officially supported (yet). I could look into getting a support case created but I'm not sure if that would make a difference given that there is no support other than your continuous efforts.
🙂
Could you please send me the iso folder for esxi that works with my Mac Pro? I have a Mac Pro 2019 and it doesn’t pick up on the Ethernet adapter via thunderbolt 3. I was able to install esxi 7, and tried 8 but nether accepted my Ethernet to thunderbolt adapter.
Hey William; thanks for the reply... And sorry for the delay! I thought I had switched on update notifications but didn't see anything until I manually checked this post 😬
So leading up to this post I had tried a number of things; I actually had started out without any VLAN configuration, and kept alternating between VLAN and no VLAN for each step of the process. I had also tried building cusomt images using both ESXi 7.0 with the and 7.0U1 with the AQC107-B1 driver (https://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/detail.php?deviceCategory=io&productid=50150&deviceCategory=io&details=1&keyword=atlantic&page=1&display_interval=10&sortColumn=Partner&sortOrder=Asc; all of the various hardware IDs match what appears in system preferences on the host machine); again, both with and without VLAN, and a variety of dead simple network configuration, I am able to see that each NIC shows the correct when connected/disconnected, but no no connection unfortunately. I've validated the hardware on the hosta machine and the router as well, it's what I use on the host system.
I'll give it a shot with 7.0 U2a and see how that shakes down. (I also just signed up for the VMUG Advantage you posted, so that may provide me with some more tools; getting this running has some pretty compelling use cases for me.)
Again, I really appreciate you going above and beyind for the community, especially considering this doesn't have official support! Please feel free to reach out to me directly if there is any information I can provide that would be helpful.
Hi Andrew,
I recently purchased the new Mac Pro 7,1 rackmount with the 10Gbe option. I'm experiencing the same problem you are having with 7.0U2b. The NICs show up in the ESXi network configuration and also display the correct connected/disconnected state but network connection doesn't work. Were you able to get it to work with 7.0U2a?
Thanks,
Nathan
Hi William, Any news on whether the Mac Pro 7,1 ( 2019 ) is going to be supported with ESXi 7.0u2 ?
Hi Jonathan-
As you can see from the top of the page looks like Mac Pro 7,1 2019 is not supported for ESX 6 or 7.
I have only gotten the built in acqantia 10gbe ethernet nics working with ESX 6.7. When I ran 7.0, it would literally take out the network in the house. Nothing worked on the ethernet until I powered down the machine.
If someone actually gets this to work, they should post:
-Network switch in use
-All NIC settings in ESX
-All NIC settings on the switch
It is really a shame Apple completely dropped the ball on what is basically best used as a Mac OS virtualization server. Of course you can make it work, just use a vmware compatible PCIe networking card.
I also advise against using the Promise Raid. I have one with 30+TB of storage; had no inkling that drivers would not materialize for this. Oddly, I was able to use direct hardware access from inside a mac OS virtual machine to share it out as an NFS share, but that is a hugely complex waste of time, especially with all of the cool PCIe NVMe systems showing up.
I wonder if anyone else on the list has a stable running server and what you fell back to for networking and storage... and if Mac OS virtualization is running good for you.
Does it also work with ESXi 8.0+?
Not sure what you mean by does it work ... the driver is simply included in all ESXi releases post 7.0u2 🙂
I also have an adapter that is not working. The system reports that "No compatible network adapter found. Please consult ..." VMware ESXi 8.0.1 22088125.
Adapter Sabrent TH-S3EA (Aquantia AQC107S),
PC - NUC7i5BNH.
I also have the fling driver for Solo-5G installed.
BIOS has thunderbird boot enabled.
I'm seeing the same behavior for that nic where it is recognized out of the box but the speed listed is 1000Mbps. Do you know why it does not list the speed as 10000Mbps (10GbE)? Currently my nic is not plugged into a 10GbE switch which could be the reason. Just wanted to confirm that this does not indicate that the port will be capped at 1000Mbps (1Gbps)
Nevermind! I can see under "Networking -> vmnic0 -> Supported Speeds" that 10000 Mbps is supported!
Jake, what version of ESXi are you running on your 2019 Mac Pro incidentally? I am embarking on a virgin install of 7.x today on a 2019 Mac Pro and it will be connected to a 10G switch. If this does NOT work as hinted at above, I'd like to know that so I can use 6.7 instead. Thanks for any help you can provide.
Hi William, this topic is a bit older, but are there any chances to see new Aquantia / Mavel NICs in the ESXi support matrix?
For instance, AQC117 is a relativ new but very power saving 10G NIC which can be found in various new systems. But this NIC is not on the ESXi support list.
You'll need to share this feedback w/Aquantia (now Marvell) as they would be one responsible for developing the drivers to support ESXi
I think they dont have any ways for end customers to provide feedback or get support. :-/