Hello!
I recently purchased two Chelsio t520-cr 10G nics to connect my ESXi box to my FreeNAS box. I installed both cards and connected them, but the card was not found in ESXi. I downloaded the driver from Chelsio and installed the cxl driver per the instructions.
The card is listed by lspci:
[root@orion:~] lspci | grep Chelsio
0000:01:00.0 Network controller: Chelsio Communications Inc. T520-CR Unified Wire Ethernet Controller
0000:01:00.1 Network controller: Chelsio Communications Inc. T520-CR Unified Wire Ethernet Controller
0000:01:00.2 Network controller: Chelsio Communications Inc. T520-CR Unified Wire Ethernet Controller
0000:01:00.3 Network controller: Chelsio Communications Inc. T520-CR Unified Wire Ethernet Controller
0000:01:00.4 Network controller: Chelsio Communications Inc. T520-CR Unified Wire Bus Enumerator
0000:01:00.5 Mass storage controller: Chelsio Communications Inc T520-CR Unified Wire Storage Controller
0000:01:00.6 Serial bus controller: Chelsio Communications Inc T520-CR Unified Wire Storage Controller
[root@orion:~]
and the driver appears to be loaded:
[root@orion:~] esxcli software vib list | grep cxl
cxl 2.0.0.21-1OEM.650.0.0.4598673 Chelsio VMwareCertified 2018-06-17
[root@orion:~]
and the kernel logs says it loaded the driver:
[root@orion:~] cat /var/log/vmkernel.log
...
2018-06-17T19:30:16.259Z cpu2:2099757)Loading module cxl ...
2018-06-17T19:30:16.265Z cpu2:2099757)Elf: 2101: module cxl has license ThirdParty
2018-06-17T19:30:16.337Z cpu2:2099757)Device: 192: Registered driver 'cxl' from 96
2018-06-17T19:30:16.337Z cpu2:2099757)Chelsio T5/T6 Native Network Driver - version 2.0.0.21
2018-06-17T19:30:16.338Z cpu2:2099757)Mod: 4962: Initialization of cxl succeeded with module ID 96.
2018-06-17T19:30:16.338Z cpu2:2099757)cxl loaded successfully.
[root@orion:~]
However, when I list the nics, the chelsio card is not listed. Only the onboard gigabit ethernet(s):
[root@orion:~] esxcfg-nics -l
Name PCI Driver Link Speed Duplex MAC Address MTU Description
vmnic0 0000:03:00.0 igbn Up 1000Mbps Full ac:1f:6b:46:89:d0 1500 Intel Corporation I350 Gigabit Network Connection
vmnic1 0000:03:00.1 igbn Up 1000Mbps Full ac:1f:6b:46:89:d1 1500 Intel Corporation I350 Gigabit Network Connection
[root@orion:~]
I've rebooted several times with no luck. The card itself has a steady red light which according to chelsio's documentation, just means that the card has power and it should go out when the driver is loaded. The card that I installed in the FreeNAS box was detected and the light is out as they suggested it would be.
I'm really stuck. Any ideas are welcome! Thanks!