Step 5 - ESXi does not natively support USB NIC and upon a reboot, the USB NICs are not picked up until much later in the boot process which prevents them from being associated with VSS/VDS and their respective portgroups. Once your system has rebooted, it should now automatically load the USB Ethernet driver and you should see your USB Ethernet Adapter as shown in the screenshot below. Step 4 - Lastly, for the changes to go into effect, you will need to reboot your ESXi host. To do so, run the following command:Įsxcli system module set -m=vmkusb -e=FALSE Step 3 - Next, you will need to disable the USB native driver to be able to use this driver. Step 2 - Install the VIB by running the following ESXCLI command to install:Įsxcli software vib install -v /vghetto-ax88179-esxi65.vib -f Step 1 - If you are upgrading from an existing ESXi 5.5 or 6.0 environment, the first thing you will want to do is uninstall the old driver by running the following command (specify the correct name of the driver):Įsxcli software vib remove -n vghetto-ax88179-esxi60u2 Step 0 - Download the ESXi 6.5 USB Ethernet Adapter Driver VIBor ESXi 6.5 USB Ethernet Adapter Driver Offline Bundleand upload it to your ESXi host. Below are the instructions on how to install this on an ESXi 6.5 host. To use this new driver for ESXi 6.5, there are some additional steps that is required. I've had several folks reach out and share there have not been any issues and upgrades will preserver the USB NIC driver or you can perform a fresh install and follow the steps below. UPDATE (04/23/18) - For folks who plan to upgrade or install ESXi 6.7, you can continue using the 6.5 driver. If you are still on ESXi 5.5/6.0, you can continue using the existing driver but please note there will be no additional development in the existing vmklinux-based driver.

UPDATE (02/12/19) - A new VMware Native Driver for USB-based NICs has just been released for ESXi 6.5/6.7, please use this driver going forward. If you are interested in Realtek driver for ESXi 6.5, be sure to check out Jose's blog here for more info. For those of you who are not familiar with this particular driver, I highly recommend you give this article here a read before proceeding any further. There were some changes that came with ESXi 6.5 and thanks to Songtao, I was able to build a new driver. I had several folks ask me about an updated USB 3.0 Ethernet Driver for ESXi 6.5, similar to what I had created for ESXi 5.5 and 6.0.

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