ESX 4 vib to ESXi 5.5?

S

scline

n00b
Joined
Dec 20, 2011
Messages
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Hey guys so I have a few 10ge SUN ATL2XGE cards and would like to use them in ESXi 5.5. By default ESX will not recognize the card due to missing drivers, after some poking around on the internet it turns out VMware did support these cards in 3.5 - 4.1 versions of ESX.

The problem is the vibs are for version 4.1 and I am not able to install them on 5.5, is there a way I can convert this vib or manually install it? When decompressing the VIP I see other files, just not sure what to do with them.

When trying ESX customizer it errors when using v5+ ESX iso with this vib. Any help would be greatly appreciated, the other option is going to Xenserver 6.2 which recognizes this out of the box. I was very close to doing that until I herd it does not really do thin-provisioning.

Hyper-V does not support this card also :(
 
So, scream at Oracle. The fix for that driver for 5.0 was ready like a month after 5.0 came out. Would work for 5.1 and probably 5.5. They declined to file paperwork so it could be released.
 
I wish I could scream at them for the driver, unfortunately I purchased the cards on Ebay and they wont talk to anyone without a service contract. =/ you cant even download there drivers without a paid service contract (I don't think that's very good business when it comes to hardware).

Good news though, I found a compromise that allows me to use the SUN 10ge card with my ESX host for data storage :), make a Solaris based router + PCI pass-through.

Between the two OpenIndiana boxes I can get about 6Gbps of bandwidth via iperf (I think I need to do some additional TCP tweaking to make this higher). Between the virtual router and ESXi host I get 7-8Gbps. Not bad for $60 a card :D

Lessons learned though, stick with approved 10g cards for vmware, way to much trouble toying with drivers :(

ESX-NIC.png
 
well... don't get too excited about VMware approved 10Gb cards being "less trouble."

I picked up a few Intel x540-T2 copper 10Gb cards (two port copper 10Gb adapters)
I found a bug in the 5.0, 5.1 and 5.5 driver where the adapters drop to 1Gbps depending on your session.

Meaning:
1 - if I start a iperf session from 10Gbps to another server (or VM) connected at 10Gbps, the flow will run at line rate.

2 - If I start a iperf session from 10Gbps to another server (or VM) connected at 1Gbps the flow will run at 1Gbps

Okay... so this is good... as expected.... but now the fun part...

3 - If I start a iperf session from 10Gbps to 10Gbps it will flow at 10Gbps. Then start up a concurrent session to any PC or VM connected at 1Gbps, ALL flows drop to under 1Gbps "total"... meaning: with the two flows running, the 10Gbps iperf session will drop down to 500Mbps and the second session connected at 1Gbps will run at 500Mbps.

The instant the 1gbps session stops/ends, the 10gbps iperf flow jumps from 500mb to 10gbps line rate.

The fix here is :
The driver that was release with ESX 5.5 GA, not the Update or any driver rollups, the original driver released with the first 5.5 iso, does not have this bug. So, I pulled the driver/vib out of the iso and I go install it with all of my updated ESXi builds. If you update to any driver, this problem exists.

I opened a ticket with VMware. I was told it was a bug in the Intel driver and that Intel needs to fix it.
I opened a ticket with Intel. I was told that VMware uses the Intel open source driver and that VMware needs to fix it.
After two months of endless run around, I gave up and stuck with the old driver.

Nicholas Farmer
http://pcli.me
 
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