Network connection lost with physical network adapter BCM57416 NetXtreme-E

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• The virtual machine cannot ping other virtual machines after upgrading ESXi to 8.0.
• The adapter uses VMware's compatible inbox driver - bnxtnet.
• No ARP packet received on the physical network card.
  For more information about how to capture network packets in ESXi, refer to Packet capture on ESXi using the pktcap-uw tool

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x

Cause

The firmware of the network adapter is too old and incompatible.

Resolution

To resolve the issue, update the firmware version to match the compatibility requirement:

1. Go to Broadcom Compatibility Guide
2. Under 'Platform & Compute' click 'IO Devices'
3. Input the network adapter VID DID SVID SSID
4. Click 'View Results'
5. Select 'ESXi Versions'
6. Contact to hardware vendor to help update the firmware version

Additional Information

For troubleshooting network connectivity issue on a virtual machine kindly refer the following kb article:
Troubleshooting virtual machine network connection issues