If the following conditions are true for ESXi hosts in your environment, please take care of VMware KB 2072515. There is a known issue, which may lead to silent data corruption:
- ESXi host is running version 3.5 or later
- the system is configured with more than 4 GB RAM
- TCP Segmentation Offload (TSO) is enabled on the adapter
- tg3 driver version is less then v3.135b
How to check the version of the tg3 driver:
Open an SSH connection to your ESXi host and run the following command:
vmkload_mod -s tg3 | grep Version
How to check if TSO is enabled:
Open an SSH connection to your ESXi host and run the following command:
esxcli system settings advanced list -o /Net/UseHwTSO
If “Int Value” is 1, than TSO is enabled…
How to update the Broadcom tg3 driver using VMware Update Manager:
- Download the tg3 driver offline bundle:
ESXi 5.5: 3.135b.v551
ESXi 5.0/5.1: 3.135b.v50.1
ESXi 3.5/4.x: there is no fix available at the moment – as a workaround you can only disable TSO!
- Extract the .zip file – you will find another .zip file in it, named “tg3-…-offline_bundle-…zip”.
- connect to your vCenter and open “Home” – “Update Manager”
- change to the “Patch Repository” tab
- click “Import Patches”
- select the offline-bundle .zip file identified before and click “Next”
- the tg3 driver will be added to the repository – click “Finish” to confirm
You can find the drivers in the Update Manager Repository displayed as: “tg3 driver for ESX”
Now you have to create a Host Extension Baseline to install the patch package on the ESXi hosts:
- change to the “Baselines and Groups” tab
- click “Create”
- enter a name for the new baseline and select “Host Extension” as baseline type:
after clicking “next” select the defined “tg3 driver for ESX” patch and add the extension. Confirm with “next”:
- review your selection and “Finish”
You have successfully created the Host Extension Baseline.
Now change to “Host and Clusters” and select a dedicated host or a whole cluster to attach the Extension Baseline. Select the “Update Manager” Tab and click “Attach”. Select the Baseline you have defined before:
You can now place the ESXi host in maintenance mode to update the driver (Remediate)
How to update the Broadcom tg3 driver via comandline:
- download the tg3 driver offline bundle:
ESXi 5.5: 3.135b.v551
ESXi 5.0/5.1: 3.135b.v50.1
ESXi 3.5/4.x: there is no fix available at the moment – as a workaround you can only disable TSO!
- extract the .zip file – you will find another .zip file in it, named “tg3-…-offline_bundle-…zip”.
- open an SSH connection to your ESXi host
- upload the offline_bundle.zip file identified before to a datastore
- place the ESXi host in maintenance mode:
esxcli system maintenancemode set –e true
- install the driver using the following command:
esxcli software vib install –d /vmfs/volume/…datastore…/
Note: please replace “…datastore…” with the name of your datastore and “offline_bundle.zip” with the correct name of the .zip file!
- reboot the host and check if the tg3 driver has the version as expected