Intel 82579LM Gigabit NIC under VMware ESXi

While bringing my self-made ESXi hosts into service I saw that only one of two network cards was detected. The reasons for this issue was that VMware ESXi offers no driver for the second network card Intel 82579LM.

What a pity. Fortunately I stumbled upon a blog which offers an adequate software packages which was created from the Intel source codes: [click me!]

The software packages just needs to be transfered to a datastore the ESXi host has access to before it can be installed. You also need to make sure that installing VIB packages that are not signed by VMware is allowed (community-supported):

1# esxcli software acceptance set --level=CommunitySupported
2# esxcli software vib install -v /vmfs/volumes/VOLUME/net-e1000e-2.3.2.x86_64.vib

After a system reboot two network cards can be used:

🙂