ESXi 6.5 on R730 with Intel X710

Hi,

What BIOS and NIC firmware versions are you on? You may also want to try manually installing the driver. https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/details?downloadGroup=DT-ESXI55-INTEL-I40E-1428&productId=353

Hello,

BIOS firmware version：2.2.5
Intel Ethernet 10G X710 rNDC firmware version：17.5.11

ESXi 6.5 information about NIC as follows：

Name PCI Device Driver Admin Status Link Status Speed Duplex MAC Address MTU Description
------ ------------ ------ ------------ ----------- ----- ------ ----------------- ---- ---------------------------------------------------------
vmnic0 0000:01:00.0 i40en Up Up 10000 Full f8:bc:12:05:86:d0 1500 Intel Corporation Ethernet Controller X710 for 10GbE SFP+
vmnic1 0000:01:00.1 i40en Up Up 10000 Full f8:bc:12:05:86:d2 1500 Intel Corporation Ethernet Controller X710 for 10GbE SFP+

According to "Native Driver support in Dell Customized VMware ESXi 6.5"

en.community.dell.com/.../dell-customized-vmware-esxi-6-5-released

• i40en – This is a new 40Gbps native network driver for Intel 40Gbps Network Controllers replacing i40e vmklinux driver in 6.0.x branch.
• ixgben – Though a new native driver is introduced for Intel 10Gbps network controllers, it’s not enabled by default.
  • Dell customized ESXi 6.5 A00 version contain the latest ixgbe vmklinux driver version for all Intel 10Gbps network controllers. Hence the vmklinux driver is going to be used for the Intel 10Gbps network controllers by default.

Does it means we should change the drive from i40en to ixgben manually in Dell Customized VMware ESXi 6.5 ?! 

I would try switching the driver, it doesn’t specify which NIC models it is referring to.

Solved! At least for me. BTW, I am using the Dell Customized image as well.

I had to remove the i40en driver using the following command:
esxcli software vib remove -n i40en

(wait about two minutes for esxi to remove the drivers)
Reboot the server

After removing the driver, the X710 NICS's defaulted to the i40e driver (without the n). The VLAN tagging started to work.
This worked on all four of my servers. I hope this helps you.

FYI:
Also, before removing the driver, I did try the following commands which did not change anything. After rebooting the server, the i40en was still enabled. Removing the i40en driver was the only thing that worked.
esxcli system module set --enabled=false --module=i40en

On mine, I updated i40en from 1.1.0-1vmw.650.0.0.4564106 driver that was on A00 to 1.2.1-1OEM.650.0.0.4240417 a driver i got from vmware.com.  I was losing connectivity on random VMs without getting any error messages that I can see.  We'll see if the update helps.  Also, one thing i noticed was under settings the older driver showed five speeds.  I'm wondering if that first choice is really half-duplex and is just labeled wrong.  Which might explain the connectivity issues.  In any case the new driver just has two choices 1000 Full and 10000 Full.

The updated driver is doing the exact same thing.  Once taken out of maintenance mode VMs move to the host and then lose communication.  Once they are vmotioned to another host they immediate resume connectivity.

From here I will try ixgben next...

en.community.dell.com/.../dell-customized-vmware-esxi-6-5-released