ESX Virtualization

VMware ESXi, vSphere, VMware Backup, Hyper-V... how-to, videos....

Nakivo Backup and Replication - #1 Backup solution for Virtual, physical, cloud, NAS and SaaS

Menu
  • Certification
      • VCP-DCV vSphere 8
          • vcp2024-125.
        • Close
    • Close
  • VMware
    • Configuration Maximums
    • vSphere
      • vSphere 8.0
      • vSphere 7.0
      • vSphere 6.7
      • vSphere 6.5
      • vSphere 6.0
      • Close
    • VMworld
      • VMware EXPLORE 2024
      • VMware EXPLORE 2023
      • VMware EXPLORE 2022
      • VMworld 2019
      • VMworld 2018
      • VMworld 2017
      • VMworld 2016
      • VMworld 2015
      • VMworld 2014
      • VMworld 2013
      • VMworld 2012
      • VMworld 2011
      • Close
    • Close
  • Microsoft
    • Windows Server 2012
    • Windows Server 2016
    • Windows Server 2019
    • Close
  • Categories
    • Tips – VMware, Microsoft and General IT tips and definitions, What is this?, How this works?
    • Server Virtualization – VMware ESXi, ESXi Free Hypervizor, VMware vSphere Server Virtualization, VMware Cloud and Datacenter Virtualization
    • Backup – Virtualization Backup Solutions, VMware vSphere Backup and ESXi backup solutions.
    • Desktop Virtualization – Desktop Virtualization, VMware Workstation, VMware Fusion, VMware Horizon View, tips and tutorials
    • How To – ESXi Tutorials, IT and virtualization tutorials, VMware ESXi 4.x, ESXi 5.x and VMware vSphere. VMware Workstation and other IT tutorials.
    • Free – Free virtualization utilities, ESXi Free, Monitoring and free backup utilities for ESXi and Hyper-V. Free IT tools.
    • Videos – VMware Virtualization Videos, VMware ESXi Videos, ESXi 4.x, ESXi 5.x tips and videos.
    • Home Lab
    • Reviews – Virtualization Software and reviews, Disaster and backup recovery software reviews. Virtual infrastructure monitoring software review.
    • Close
  • Partners
    • NAKIVO
    • StarWind
    • Zerto
    • Xorux
    • Close
  • This Web
    • News
    • ESXi Lab
    • About
    • Advertise
    • Archives
    • Disclaimer
    • PDFs and Books
    • Close
  • Free
  • Privacy policy

ESXi Commands List – networking commands [Part 2]

By Vladan SEGET | Last Updated: November 28, 2016

Shares

We have learned some good networking and troubleshooting commands in the first part our post – ESXi Commands List – networking commands. Today, we'll add some more, and those ones will be especially useful for upgrading and patching ESXi when dealing with firmware version and drivers of your pNICs. In fact, there are two one-liners only….

I continue to document (and record videos) of different ways to upgrade (or migrate) vCenter Server to the latest vSphere 6.5 version. And also to document the ESXi upgrades to ESXi 6.5. Today, I thought it is a good lesson to learn because we will deal with hardware, and particularly my X710-DA2 hardware.

As you might fear, the first thing is to check if your hardware is on the HCL for the ESXi 6.5. If yes, then look at the combination of Firmware and Driver version which you'll need to install. Here is a screenshot from the VMware HCL page for my X710-DA2 10GbE SFP NIC which I'm using in 3 of my lab hosts.

As you can see, I need to be on the 5.04 firmware and have the i40e version 1.4.28 with my NICs.

x710-da2

I leave the firmware upgrade part. (I took the card out, plugged it to my management box running Windows 10 and upgraded the Firmware within this environment. Note that you can do it within Windows or Linux environment.).

How to check the Firmware version and version of a driver installed?

During the first post –  we have learned some other networking commands and, but we can list the available physical NICs which are present on our host. To recap this, the command is this one:

esxcli network nic list

As an output, you'll see all your network adapters and their name, starting with vmnic0, then vmnic1, vmnic2 etc, etc. Click to enlarge the image.

ESXi Networking Commands

Simple, right? I want to check the vmnic6 for example as it is one of my 10GbE SFP NIC. I want to make sure which driver and firmware combination I need to install…

I'll initiate this command:

esxcli network nic get -n vmnic6

And the output shows me the version of the driver and the card's firmware…

ESXi Commands List – networking commands

Note the above screenshot was taken after I updated my firmware and my driver, so I'm just demonstrating the command and the output.

For updating drivers within VMware vSphere environment you have several options. Either you can use ESXi CLI or VMware Update Manager. In either case, you'll need to install a VIB or ZIP package. The commands vary. If you're new to VMware, you might wonder what is a VIB?

What is VIB?

A VIB is  vSphere Installation Bundle. There are differences between individual VIBs, Image profile or Software depot. Check my post about VIBs here. You'll find out that VIB has 3 parts and other interesting details.

For my particular case I have used this command to update the driver of my NICs:

esxcli software vib install -d /vmfs/volumes/my_datastore/my_driver.zip

So in my case it was:

esxcli software vib install -d /vmfs/volumes/drobo/i40e-1.4.28-1331820-offline_bundle-4075203.zip

And you can see the image of the result here.

Installation of ESXi 6.5 driver for my X710-DA2 10GbE NICs

To wrap up, you can check the VIB via this:

esxcli software vib list

which shows you all the VIBs present on your ESXi host.

More ESXi CLI commands:

  • ESXi Commands List – networking commands
  • ESXi CLI Networking commands Part 2 – [This post]
  • ESXi Commands List – Getting Started 
  • ESXi Commands List – Snapshot Deletion Monitoring
  • ESXi Commands List – Storage

You can check all posts about vSphere 6.5 on my vSphere 6.5 dedicated WordPress page.

VMware vSphere 6.5:

  • How to Migrate Windows based vCenter Server 6.0 to vCenter 6.5 (In-Place)
  • How to Migrate Windows Based vCenter to VCSA 6.5 [Lab]
  • How to Install VCSA 6.5 in VMware Workstation [LAB]
  • How to Upgrade ESXi 6.0 to 6.5 via ISO
  • How to create a USB media with ESXi 6.5 Installation
  • VMware vSphere 6.5 Released – Start Your Download Engines

Stay tuned through RSS, and social media channels (Twitter, FB, YouTube).

Shares
4.5/5 - (2 votes)

| Filed Under: Server Virtualization Tagged With: ESXi Commands List – networking commands

About Vladan SEGET

This website is maintained by Vladan SEGET. Vladan is as an Independent consultant, professional blogger, vExpert x16, Veeam Vanguard x9, VCAP-DCA/DCD, ESX Virtualization site has started as a simple bookmarking site, but quickly found a large following of readers and subscribers.

Connect on: Facebook. Feel free to network via Twitter @vladan.

Comments

  1. Seth Allums says

    July 4, 2018 at 2:18 am

    Hi Vladan!

    Is it ok to be on a higher firmware than what is listed? (Is the listed firmware just the minimum required for the driver version in order to be supported?).

    We are getting ready to upgrade from 6.0 to 6.7, and also have the X710 adapter. We are running driver version 1.4.28 and have NIC firmware version 6.0, and on the compatibility site, it shows ESXi 6.7 being compatible with driver version 1.4.28 and NIC firmware version 5.04. Are we ok at a higher version?

    Thanks in advance!

Private Sponsors

Featured

  • Thinking about HCI? G2, an independent tech solutions peer review platform, has published its Winter 2023 Reports on Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) Solutions.
  • Zerto: One Platform for Disaster Recovery, Backup & Cloud Mobility: Try FREE Hands-On Labs Today!
Click to Become a Sponsor

Most Recent

  • FREE version of StarWind VSAN vs Trial of Full version
  • Commvault’s Innovations at RSA Conference 2025 San Francisco
  • VMware ESXi FREE is FREE again!
  • Installation of StarWind VSAN Plugin for vSphere
  • Protect Mixed environments with Nakivo Physical Machine recovery (bare metal)
  • No more FREE licenses of VMware vSphere for vExperts – What’s your options?
  • Tails – Your Private OS on USB Stick
  • StarWind V2V Converter Now has CLI
  • Veeam VHR ISO v2 – 2025 Download and Install
  • Deployment OVA and Installation of Nakivo Backup and Replication for VMware

Get new posts by email:

 

 

 

 

Support us on Ko-Fi

 

 

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Sponsors

Free Trials

  • DC Scope for VMware vSphere – optimization, capacity planning, and cost management. Download FREE Trial Here.
  • Augmented Inline Deduplication, Altaro VM Backup v9 For #VMware and #Hyper-V – Grab your copy now download TRIAL.

VMware Engineer Jobs

VMware Engineer Jobs

YouTube

…

Find us on Facebook

ESX Virtualization

…

Copyright © 2025 ·Dynamik-Gen · Genesis Framework · Log in