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USB Network Native Driver now supports ESXi 7.0 Update 1

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I know many of you have been asking about this and today I am happy to share that the USB Network Native Driver for ESXi Fling is now supported with ESXi hosts running the latest 7.0 Update 1 release.

Note: The USB Network Native Driver is only supported with x86 ESXi and NOT with the ESXi-Arm Fling, there seems to be some confusion since these are two different CPU architectures.

In addition, there are a couple of minor enhancements (see changelog for details), but one feature that I am super excited to see incorporated into this version of the Fling is the automatic persistency of USB NIC binding, which maps physical USB NICs to either a Standard or Distributed Virtual Switch. Previously, this required users to update the local.sh script on ESXi to automatically restore the NIC bindings since the processing of these interfaces happens much later in the boot up process. These tweaks are no longer required when using this version of the Fling!

This enhancement was the direct result from Andrei Warkentin and his work on the ESXi-Arm Fling with the Raspberry Pi! Huge thanks to him for this contribution and hopefully we can repay that back one day with the integration of the USB Network Native Driver into the ESXi-Arm Fling 😉

USB Network Native Driver Fling for ESXi v1.6

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The popular USB Native Driver Fling for ESXi has just been updated to version 1.6 and is one of our larger releases.

Here are some of the key new features, for complete list, please refer to the Changelog tab on the Fling site.

  • Support for 4 additional USB NICs including the highly requested RTL8156 which is a 2.5GbE USB NIC and can be found on Amazon for as low as $25 USD. For more details, please refer to Requirements tab on the Fling site.
  • Support for persisting VMkernel to USB NIC MAC Address mappings which was an issue when using multiple USB NICs. Upon reboot, ESXi may randomize the mappings which can cause issues. For more details on this feature, please refer to the Instructions tab on the Fling site.
  • Simplified method for persisting USB NIC bindings. For more details, please refer to the Instructions tab on the Fling site.

Homelab considerations for vSphere 7

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With the vSphere 7 Launch Event just a few days away, I know many of you are eager to get your hands on this latest release of vSphere and start playing with it in you homelab. A number of folks in the VMware community have already started covering some of the amazing capabilities that will be introduced in vSphere and vSAN 7 and I expect to see that ramp up even more in the coming weeks.

One area that I have not seen much coverage on is around homelab usage with vSphere 7. Given this is a pretty significant release, I think there are some things you should be aware of before you rush out and immediately upgrade your existing homelab environment. As with any vSphere release, you should always carefully review the release notes when they are made available and verify the hardware and its underlying components are officially on the VMware HCL, this is the only way to ensure that you will have a good and working experience.

Having said that, here are just a few of the observations that I have made while running pre-GA builds of vSphere 7 in my own personal homelab. This is not an exhaustive list and I will try to update this article as more information is made available.

Disclaimer: The following considerations below is based on my own personal homelab experience using a pre-GA build of vSphere 7 and it does not reflect any official support or guidance from VMware. Please use these recommendation at your own risk.

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