Weird NIC behaviour ESXI

[Frozennova]

My home ESXI server consists of

Asrock 970 Pro3
8gb ddr3
Sempron x2 190
Intel Pci gigabit nic.

I've set up the onboard realtek 8111e to handle the management interface as well as my two debian vms then setup hardware passthrough on the Intel nic and assigned that to a FreeNAS VM.

I can boot the server and login to Vsphere however once I start the freenas vm the management network connection drops out.

I've tested hardware passthrough is working correctly by setting up the realtek on a Windows vm so can confirm there is no issue there.

Any one have any ideas?

 

[quickshot89]

Are you sure ESXi fully supports the realtek card?

 

[jake108]

You could try this Install ESXi 5.5 with Realtek 8111/8168 NIC

 

[Frozennova]

It's now been up with just the realtek nic for an hour or so. I'd say that it appears to be supported.

Main reason for passing through the nic was to try and solve my terrible network speeds on freenas (500 Mbit vs 900Mbit on debian)

I think I'm now going to ditch freenas in favour of debian and either ZFS on Linux or MDADM