NetXtreme II no longer supported

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Qlogic obtained these cards through their acquisition of Broadcom's NetExtreme product line. Although the cards may work in most cases, they were never properly supported by the native qfle3 driver.

KB77304, linked below, lists these cards, along with many others, that have been deprecated in three documents attached to it. In this case, these cards are examples of 2.b. in that KB.

2. Device Supported by Native Drivers:
b. Devices that were supported by a Native inbox in 6.7 or earlier and will recognized by 7.0 but are no longer supported in 7.0 and will be completely removed from the driver in a subsequent release.

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/77304

Cards affected:
NetXtreme II BCM57711 10 Gigabit Ethernet
NetXtreme II BCM57711E 10 Gigabit Ethernet
NetXtreme II BCM57711E/NC532m 10 Gigabit Ethernet
NetXtreme II BCM57711E/NC532i 10 Gigabit Ethernet
NetXtreme II BCM57710 10 Gigabit Ethernet

The VMware Compatibility Guide erroneously listed these cards with ESXi 7.0 with the qfle3 driver. This error has been corrected.