I never thought this day would ever come as I am sure this will come as a complete shock to many, but I am pleased to announce that we have just released a new VMware Fling: Realtek Network Driver for ESXi 😎
Yes, you read that right! 🤯
In fact, I have it running on my Minisforum MS-A2 which has an RTL8125 (2.5GbE), which I can now use! The RTL Driver can be installed on either ESX 8.0 Update 3+ or 9.x+
This Realtek (RTL) PCIe-based driver is NOT an official driver from Realtek, it was developed by one of our VCF Engineers, Wenchao 👏
The driver currently supports the following RTL PCIe Devices:
- RTL8111 - 1GbE
- RTL8125 - 2.5GbE
- RTL8126 - 5GbE
- RTL8127 - 10GbE
To download the Realtek Network Driver for ESXi offline bundle, head over to the Free Downloads section for Flings on the Broadcom Support Portal (BSP).
UPDATE (11/21/25) - RTL Network Driver for ESXi 1.101.01 is now available and resolves network connection drop that some folks were experiencing. If you have not installed this version, go ahead and download and follow the installation steps below. If you had installed the earlier version of the driver, you can simply upgrade without re-installing, please see the instructions below for more details.