Network card (vmnic) not visible after replacing SFP transceiver

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• One or more NICs are not detected on the ESXi after its SFP was replaced.
  
  
• You verified that the vmnic is supported and running the latest driver and firmware versions.
  
  
• The affected vmnic will not appear under the Physical Adapters section in the vCenter or Host Client UI.
  
  
• The affected NIC is also not detected when running the following commands from ESXi SSH or Shell :

esxcfg-nics -l

esxcli network nic list

• IDRAC / ILO shows the NIC enabled and is UP : 
  
  
  
• When running the commands lspci -v | grep -A1 -i ethernet OR vmkchdev -l | grep -i vmnic, the vmnic is listed correctly.
  
  
• The following logs can be found in the /var/log/vmkernel.log OR /var/log/boot.log : 
  
  

  20##-##-##T16:##:##.##82 In (182) vmkernel: cpu###:20##652) VMK_PCI: 751: 0000:33:00.0: pciBar 0 bus_addr 0xa#####00 size 0x100000 
  20##-##-##T16:##:##.##92 In (182) vmkernel: cpu###:20##652) DMA: 721: DMA Engine '######' created using mapper 'DMANull'.
  20##-##-##T16:##:##.##72 In (182) vmkernel: cpu###:20##652) ######: ######_InitSharedCode: 356: 0000:33:##.#: Unsupported SFP+ or QSFP detected. Try to replace a supported module then reload the driver 
  20##-##-##T16:##:##.##72 In (182) vmkernel: cpu###:20##652) ######: ######_InitSharedCode: 361: 0000:33:##.#: HW init failed: err = -19 
  20##-##-##T16:##:##.##72 Wa (180) vmkwarning: cpu###:20##652) WARNING: ######: indry_Attach: 1584: 0000:33:##.#: Failed to init shared code 
  20##-##-##T16:##:##.##72 In (182) vmkernel: cpu###:20##652) DMA: 767: DMA Engine '######' destroyed.
  20##-##-##T16:##:##.##82 Wa (180) vmkwarning: cpu###:20##652) WARNING: ######: entryPoint_Attach:1721: Failed to attach device, Status: Failure

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 7.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x

Cause

The error occurred because an unsupported SFP+ or QSFP module was detected on the NIC (0000:33:##.#). As a result, the driver was unable to initialize the adapter properly.

Resolution

Contact the hardware vendor to replace the unsupported SFP with a supported module.

Additional Information

Reference KB: Network cards not detected on ESXi host