bnxtnet driver is not detecting all Broadcom NICs on ESXi

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• bnxtnet driver is not detecting all Broadcom NICs on ESXi
• ESXi server has two or more Broadcom bnxtnet based NIC devices
  
  
• Unexpected commands executed and rebooted the ESXi host
  For example:
  esxcli system module parameters set -m bnxtnet -p RSS=

Note: "RSS=" parameter need to number as  2, 4, 8 or more(if device is supported).

• From vmkernel log as boot, 
  YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS cpu40:2098069)Loading module bnxtnet ...
  YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS cpu40:2098069)Elf: 2119: module bnxtnet has license BSD
  YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS cpu40:2098069)WARNING: Elf: 525: Fixed strtoul conversion failure
  YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS cpu40:2098069)WARNING: Elf: 599: RSS: argument  failed!
  YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS cpu40:2098069)WARNING: Elf: 3139: Kernel based module load of bnxtnet failed: Bad parameter <ElfParseModuleParams failed>

 

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0.x

Cause

Unexpected parameter doesn't support for bnxtnet module.

Resolution

Once clear the bnxtnet module's unexpected parameter and Reboot the ESXi host.

esxcli system module parameters clear -m bnxtnet

Additional Information

Consider a system with 3 Broadcom bnxtnet based NIC devices with 2 ports each device. 
The following is a basic module parameters set command using the same RSS value for all ports, 

For example:
esxcli system module parameters set -m bnxtnet -p RSS=4,4,4,4,4,4


Check for bnxtnet module's parameter before ESXi reboot.

esxcfg-module -g bnxtnet