NICs using ntg3 driver may experience loss of connectivity

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• NICs using ntg3 driver may experience loss of connectivity.
• Unable to restore Network connectivity until ESXi host is rebooted.
• The devices affected are Broadcom NetXtreme I 5717, 5718, 5719, 5720, 5725 and 5727 Ethernet adapters.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.5

Cause

There are two causes for this issue,

• Repeated reset of the device, which may have triggered by prolonged high network traffic.
• Sending certain malformed TSO packet coming from VMs such as F5 virtual appliances.

Resolution

This is a known issue with ntg3 driver version 4.1.0.0, bundled in ESXi 6.5 GA.

To fix this issue upgrade to latest ntg3 driver version 4.1.2.0 or newer.