After upgrading Cisco nenic to v2.0.10.0 and above, vmnics will not pass traffic post ESXi reboot

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Any vmnics using Cisco nenic 2.0.10.0 (ESXi 7.0+) or nenic 2.0.11.0 (ESXi 8.0) may not pass traffic after the host is rebooted.
This issue has been encountered after upgrading to ESXi 7.0 Update 3p, or to 8.0, but may impact other versions.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 7.x

Resolution

Until Cisco releases a fix in an updated driver, you must manually run these commands for each vmnic to get them operational again:

esxcli network nic down -n vmnicX
esxcli network nic up -n vmnicX

Note: replace the 'X' with the appropriate vmnic number(s)