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USB Network Native Driver Fling for ESXi 8.0 Update 1

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Songtao and I are happy to share that we now have a compatible version of the USB Network Native Driver for ESX v1.12 Fling that supports the latest ESXi 8.0 Update 1 release! 🥳

This release also includes a couple of minor enhancement and fixes which are listed below:

  • Support for new DLINK RTL8156 device (0x2001:0xb301)
  • Updated maximum supported USB Network devices from 8 to 12
  • Resolved 2.5GbE link speed issue for RTL8156 adapter

Additionally, while ESXi 8.0 Update 1 has just been released, we know that not everyone will be on the latest version and these enhancement and fixes have also been ported to a version of USB Network Native Driver for ESX v1.12 Fling driver to also support ESXi 8.0, 8.0a, 8.0b, etc.

Use the following ESXi Component ZIP files based on your desired version of ESXi 8.x:

  • ESXi 8.0 - ESXi800-VMKUSB-NIC-FLING-64098182-component-21668107.zip
  • ESXi 8.0 Update 1 - ESXi80U1-VMKUSB-NIC-FLING-64098092-component-21669994.zip

Note: There are no plans to backport these enhancements/fixes to prior ESXi releases

Finally, if you are looking to create a custom ESXi ISO or Image Profile AND you either have an existing or can deploy a vCenter Server, please refer to this blog post for using vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) via the UI or PowerCLI to create your custom images.


If you do NOT have or can not deploy a vCenter Server (no hosts required), then you can refer to this blog post for using PowerCLI Image Builder to create your custom images, but make sure you update Python dependency to at least 3.7.9+ or you will run into this issue.

How to recover ESXi installed on USB device after disabling vmkusb module?

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I have to say, this is one of the more interesting challenges that I have come across in quite some time. A user was looking for assistance after they accidentally disabled the vmkusb module, which is the USB driver for ESXi and allows it to communicate with USB devices that are connected to the system.

The vmkusb module also plays a very critical role if you have ESXi installed on a USB device, as the driver is required for proper functionality such as being able to save the ESXi state and configurations to the USB device. So what happens when you disable the vmkusb module and you reboot the ESXi host, which is also installed on a USB device?

Well, everything continues to work including VMs since ESXi by design runs in memory after the initial boot from the USB device. However, any configuration changes made after that is lost after a system reboot including the attempt to re-enable the vmkusb module since ESXi is unable save any of the settings to the USB device. Fortunately, I was able to help the user out as I had a few ideas on how we could fully recover from this type of scenario and hence the blog post.

Hopefully a lesson can be learned here, do not make changes or disable things that you are not familiar with 🙂

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Emulating a Virtual USB storage device using Nested ESXi

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My buddy Alan Renouf had pinged me earlier today and asked whether it was possible to emulate a USB storage device that could aide him in the testing the installation of ESXi from a USB device but without having to use a real USB device. I honestly was not aware of any mechanisms that would allow for this and I normally would just passthrough a real USB device to a Nested ESXi VM for this type of testing purposes.

While thinking about his question, I also recall we had made some enhancements to our Virtual USB interface that would allow user to back it using a disk file. While searching further, I came to learn that not only was this possible, but it was also a common method for testing USB-based installation without the hassle of messing with physical hardware. It turns out you can just present a Virtual Disk (VMDK) to a VM running ESXi (Nested ESXi) and through a special driver, it will recognize the device as a USB storage device!

I definitely wish I had learned about this earlier and it goes to show, all the hard engineering efforts made by our VMware Engineers to make testing and using our software as easy as possible even without needing real physical hardware 😀

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