Dell Broadcom Adapters: False Positive Firmware Warnings in Skyline Health
Article ID: 442405
Updated On:
Products
Issue/Introduction
vSAN Skyline Health reports a "non-compliant" yellow warning for the "Controller driver/firmware is VMware certified" health check on Dell Broadcom (bnxtnet) network adapters. This occurs even when the installed firmware meets or exceeds the minimum requirements listed in the VMware Compatibility Guide (VCG). This discrepancy impacts search visibility for vSAN 8.0 Update 3 and ESXi 8.0u3 environments using Dell OEM firmware packages
- Skyline Health displays a yellow warning:
Controller driver/firmware is VMware certified. - The vSAN HCL database check indicates the device is non-compliant.
- The reported firmware version contains extra characters or a different format than the expected string in the HCL database.
Environment
- Product: VMware vSAN 8.x, VMware ESXi 8.x
- Hardware: Dell PowerEdge Servers (15G, 16G)
- Network Adapter: Dell Broadcom (bnxtnet) adapters
- Software Component: vSAN Skyline Health / vSAN HCL Database
Cause
A metadata parsing discrepancy causes this false positive. Skyline Health expects an exact string match for the firmware version (e.g., 36.11.73.00). However, Dell OEM hardware often returns a compound string containing both the base NVM version and the package version. Because the reported string contains these extra characters, the health checker fails to parse the digits correctly.
Resolution
Once compliance is verified mathematically (the digits following /pkg match or exceed the HCL minimum), the environment is in a supported state. Follow these steps to remediate the alert:
- Verify Compliance: Confirm the driver and firmware versions are listed as a valid pair on the .
- Silence the Alarm:
- Navigate to Cluster > Monitor > vSAN > Skyline Health.
- Locate the "Controller driver/firmware is VMware certified" health check.
- Select the alert and click Silence Alert.
- Update HCL Database: Update the vSAN HCL database periodically from the vSphere Client to receive updated parsing logic as it becomes available.
Additional Information
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