ESXi 8.0 installation fails with "No network adapters were detected" on Broadcom BCM57608.

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

ESXi 8.0 installation fails with the error message: "No network adapters were detected". The ESXi bnxtnet driver fails to initialize during the boot phase, preventing the installer from detecting the physical network adapters.

Environment

VMware ESXi 8.0 U3

Cause

The Broadcom BCM57608 network adapter firmware sets a default MSI-X vector requirement of 512 per Physical Function (PF), which exhausts the ESXi 8.0 AMD IOMMU interrupt allocation resources during boot.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, the network adapter must be updated to the latest supported firmware version.

Please reach out to the hardware vendor (Dell) to obtain and apply the latest firmware for the Broadcom BCM57608 network adapter.

Follow the procedure below as guided by Dell and in accordance with the relevant Dell reference article: PowerEdge: AMD CPU - VMware ESXi - Broadcom 100 Gbps network card support

The following steps should be performed as guided by Dell:

1. Access the  iDRAC interface ( for Dell servers) or reboot the server and enter the Lifecycle Controller.
2. Download and apply the latest available firmware for the Broadcom BCM57608 NIC (for example, version 237.1.148.0 or later, if applicable to your hardware model).
3. Perform a complete cold reboot of the server after the firmware update. This ensures that the updated NVRAM defaults are properly initialized at the hardware level.
4. In most cases, updating to the latest firmware automatically reduces the MSI-X Vector value from 512 to 128.
5. If the MSI-X Vector value remains set to 512 after the firmware upgrade, please work with the  Hardware Support Team to manually modify the setting from 512 to 128 through the server's hardware configuration (F2 System Setup or equivalent server configuration utility).
6. Once the firmware update and MSI-X Vector configuration changes have been completed, retry the ESXi 8.0 installation using the Dell Customized ESXi ISO.

This behavior is hardware and firmware dependent; therefore, Hardware team should be engaged for guidance on the firmware upgrade process and any required hardware-level configuration change

Additional Information

PowerEdge: AMD CPU - VMware ESXi - Broadcom 100 Gbps network card support

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