Intel X710 NIC cards not detected after upgrade to ESXi 8.0 Update 3j

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• After upgrading to ESXi 8.0 Update 3j and updating host firmware, integrated Intel X710 network adapters are not detected by the ESXi operating system.
• Physical link LEDs on the network ports remain green.
• Hardware sensors report no errors, but logical interfaces are absent from the vSphere Client and esxcli command output.
• In the devmanager logs from the ESXi host, similar logging shown below is seen in /var/run/log/vmkdevmgr.log
  
  

  vmkmod: VMKModLoad: Module i40en is disabled and cannot be loaded.
  Error loading driver i40en: Unable to load module /usr/lib/vmware/vmkmod/i40en: Failure
  Unable to load driver i40en

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi

Cause

The issue occurs because the native i40en driver module fails to load automatically during the kernel boot sequence. Although the module is set to an "Enabled" state, a configuration anomaly prevents the VMkernel from claiming the hardware IDs associated with the X710 chipset during initialization.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, manually load the driver module and verify persistence:

1. Log in to the ESXi host shell or SSH as root.
2. Verify the current status of the i40en module: 
   esxcli system module get -m i40en 
   
   Note: If the command returns no output, the module is not loaded.
   
   
3. Manually load the i40en driver module:
    vmkload_mod i40en
   
   
4. Confirm that the network adapters are now recognized and loaded: 
   
   esxcli system module list | egrep -i 'is loaded|----|i40e'
Name                     Is Loaded         Is Enabled
----------------------   ----------        ----------
i40en                         true               true


5. Reboot the host to validate that the drivers load automatically without further manual intervention.