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You are here: Home / ESXi / vSphere 8 productizes Community Networking Driver Fling for ESXi

vSphere 8 productizes Community Networking Driver Fling for ESXi

09.13.2022 by William Lam // 6 Comments

Back in July with the release of vSphere 7.0 Update 3f, I had shared that all Intel i219 devices from the Community Networking Driver Fling for ESXi is now part of default ESXi 7.0 Update 3f installation. This simplified the ESXi installation process as customers no longer needed to create a custom ESXi ISO that contains the Fling driver.

While the e1000-community module within the Community Networking Driver Fling for ESXi has been productized, the Fling also includes another driver module called igc-community which adds support for Intel i220, i225 & i226 PCIe-based network devices. For recent Intel NUC platforms like the Intel NUC 11 (Panther Canyon & Tiger Canyon), Intel NUC 11 Extreme (Beast Canyon), Intel NUC 12 Extreme (Dragon Canyon) and Intel NUC 12 Pro (Wall Street Canyon) the Fling is still required for ESXi to recognize the onboard network interfaces.

As of vSphere 8, which was recently announced at VMware Explore US, I am happy 😆 (or jacked, jazzed, or pumped) to share that the Community Networking Driver Fling for ESXi will be fully productized! Customers who install ESXi 8.0 will no longer need to create a custom ESXi Image and the network devices listed on the Fling page will automatically be detected by ESXi.

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Categories // ESXi, Home Lab, vSphere 8.0 Tags // ESXi 8.0

Comments

  1. rndkyle says

    09/13/2022 at 12:13 pm

    That's exciting! It almost feels like we're taking a step forward again on support for drivers, after so many were removed from the initial 7.0 release.

    Reply
  2. Bill Mates says

    09/14/2022 at 5:00 pm

    Thanks for your work William.

    Reply
  3. Chris Matthews says

    10/31/2022 at 9:21 am

    The only bad part is it only recognize the USB nic at 100mb

    Reply
  4. bazz21uk says

    11/04/2022 at 6:40 am

    Im currently using 7.0.3 with the usbfling. I've tried to install 8 but it doesn't recognise the usb network adaptor. i use a TP-Link USB 3.0 to Gigabit Ethernet Network Adapter (UE306) with with 7.0.3 and it works great. Shame its not supported out of the box with 8. Hopefully a fling can support this on 8 as it did with 7. Its only a backup/test box but i'd still prefer it to be on 8 like my other boxes.

    Reply
  5. Pascal says

    12/15/2022 at 8:20 am

    Hello William,
    any plans to support Realtek 8111H-CG on NUC7pjyhn in ESXi 7/8 ?
    Regards
    Pascal

    Reply
    • William Lam says

      12/15/2022 at 10:29 am

      No plans for RTL support. That must come from RTL who has not expressed interests in supporting this eco-system

      Reply

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William Lam is a Senior Staff Solution Architect working in the VMware Cloud team within the Cloud Infrastructure Business Group (CIBG) at VMware. He focuses on Cloud Native technologies, Automation, Integration and Operation for the VMware Cloud based Software Defined Datacenters (SDDC)

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