Driver and Firmware version of vmnic shows older version on ESXi host.

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• vmnic is disconnected on vCenter.

• The link status of vmnic is marked down. However, the admin status remains up.
  • The "Link Status" column specifies the status of the link between the physical network adapter vmnic# and the physical switch port.
• ESXi displays old details of firmware and driver of the affected vmnic.
• iLO shows no firmware version listed for the respective affected vmnic:
• Following errors were reported in the vmkernel logs:
  • YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.606Z cpu0:2098002)WARNING: <NMLX_WRN> command failed, status bad parameter(0x3), syndrome 0x6c4d48 2026-05-17T06:30:24.606Z cpu0:2098002)WARNING: <NMLX_ERR> [nmlx5_GetTemperatureMeasurements 1614]: Failed accessing MTMP register

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi

Cause

Due to a hardware-level fault, firmware and driver information is missing from the hardware console, leading to the host's inability to detect these components.

Resolution

• Ensure that the driver and the firmware version are compatible and up to date. Refer to Supported drivers and firmware versions for I/O devices for further details.
• Reach out to the Hardware vendor for further investigation.

Additional Information

To validate the driver/firmware version of the network adapters, please refer article: Determining Network/Storage firmware and driver version in ESXi

For more information on the link status of the network adapters, refer: Setting the admin state up or down for a vmnic interface on ESXi