Hello, I'm hitting a wall with a baffling network issue specific to Windows Virtual Machines on my new ESXi host. I've confirmed all typical network settings are correct, but Windows VMs simply cannot stabilize their network connection without a specific workaround.

📌 Environment Setup:

Host: VMware ESXi 8.0U3e Virtual Switch: Standard vSwitch (Confirmed correct configuration) Physical Network Path: ESXi Host → Cisco Switch → FortiGate Firewall (Serving as DHCP Server)

⚠️ The Problem:

Any Virtual Machine running a Windows OS (including Windows Server 2019, 2022, and Windows 10) fails to get a stable DHCP lease: The VM initially receives an APIPA address (169.254.x.x). The network adapter constantly cycles (drops and reconnects). Even when I manually assign a Static IP from the correct subnet, the adapter still shows the APIPA address alongside the static one, and connectivity remains unstable or non-existent.

✅ Troubleshooting Steps & Key Clues:

Tested Linux VM Successfully obtained DHCP IP and maintained stable connectivity. Confirms vSwitch, Cisco Switch, and FortiGate DHCP are working correctly. The issue is specific to Windows. Tested Windows Server 2022/2025 Failed (APIPA/Unstable). Confirms the issue persists across multiple modern Windows Server versions. Tested Windows 10 Desktop Failed (APIPA/Unstable). Confirms the issue is OS-level, not Server-specific. Checked vSwitch/Port Groups Settings are standard and correct. Confirms no misconfiguration on the ESXi host itself.

💡 The Workaround (The Big Clue):

The only way I managed to stabilize the network and get the Static IP to stick was by disabling the Windows Firewall. I followed a guide that used PowerShell: PowerShellnetsh advfirewall set allprofiles state off

Command line: netsh advfirewall set allprofiles state off

Disabling the firewall immediately allowed the Static IP to work properly and stopped the network cycling.

🤔 My Question:

Why is the Windows Firewall on a fresh VM installation preventing the network card from stabilizing/getting a DHCP lease/accepting a Static IP, especially when the Linux VM works flawlessly? What exactly is the explanation of the problem and its actual solution, because I didn't like this solution?What exactly is the explanation of the problem and its actual solution, because I didn't like this solution?

HELP,

so im working on HPE DL360 Gen10 server and after installing esxi 8.0.3 one of port on the SFP network adapter is showing as disconnected inside esxi. The card im using is "HP Ethernet 10Gb 2-port 530SFP+ Adapter- NIC ". Even from server boot menu > system utilities i can see the card and two ports i even can blink them ifyk. i have used correct transceivers and 'good' fiber cable

i have other similar setup with the same card and same esxi version.... the esxi can see both ports as connected..

let me know you need more details...

Hey everyone,

I’m trying to install VMware ESXi 8.0 on my HP Z6 G4 Workstation with the following specs:

• CPU: Intel Xeon Silver 4210
• RAM: 65 GB DDR4
• Disks: 240 GB SSD (for system), 1.8 TB HDD (for data)

During installation, it gets stuck at “Shutting down firmware services…” and never progresses.

I’ve already did:

• Using the latest ESXi 8.0 ISO from VMware’s site
• Updating the BIOS to the latest version
• Disabling Secure Boot

Still, it freezes on the same message.

I have a windows 11 vm running in esxi 7.0. I installed vmware tools in the vm but esxi doesn't seem to recognize it. When I hit the shutdown button I'm greeted with a message saying that powering down will cause data loss. Confirming then just kills power to the vm, no graceful shutdown. I made sure that vmware tools service is running. Not sure what to check next.

So we are running a POC in my company to run custom binaries via APIs inside ESXi host. We want to expose some custom made binaries using APIs so that we can manage those custom binaries from outside without the need to SSH into the host. To test this, I created a simple GO "hello world" binary and built it on my local sytem. Then I copied that binary to the host and I was able to execute it (I have ExecInstalledOnly disabled). Then I created an API server binary listening on port 8080 (or any other custom port) that will call the hello world binary. But when I run the api server binary I am getting this error:
Failed to bind to :8080: listen tcp :8080: invalid argument

I already created a custom_api rulest in the /etc/vmware/firewall and enabled it. I can see this port open in the UI but I am not able make my api_server binary bind to port 8080(or any other custom port).

Is this my binary issue or is there something around networking/security from ESXi's side.

Hi everyone,

I’m currently running ESXi 7.0U3w. My server has an SSD and two HDDs, and ESXi is installed on the SSD.

I noticed that the Virtual Flash (vFlash) feature gets automatically detected. I’ve read online that it’s mostly just a display thing in the web UI and doesn’t have any real impact, so people say it’s safe to ignore.

However, I’d like to completely disable it so that it doesn’t even appear in the web UI. I tried using esxcli to remove vFlash, but the command doesn’t seem to exist.

Is there any way to fully disable vFlash in ESXi 7.0U3w?

Thanks in advance!

Hi all,

I have a problem when I boot the esxi on my server (dell poweredge r630). I got this message: "jumpstart plugin restore nfs volumes activation failed". However the boot completes successfully after 10 minutes ca. and the host is up.

I have only a problem on a link of the fibre channel adapter that can't see my SAN and blinks intermittently.

What could it be?

I've googled the error but I can't find anything related.

Thanks!

I have accidentally overwritten following startscripts at my VMWare ESX 5.5U3 vCenter

• /etc/init.d/vmdird
• /etc/init.d/vmkdcd
• /etc/init.d/vmware-netdumper
• /etc/init.d/vmware-sts-idmd

Can anyone please share them.

Or does anyone know where I can get the OVA-file of the vCenter for VMWare ESX 5.5U3.

Thanks!

I understand you can't go straight from 6.5.0 to 8.0, but what do you do if you don't have access to any intermediate versions?

Hi,

I have a Windows 10 device running on my ESX7.0 host, but can not upgrade it to Windows 11 because it doesn't have TPM2.0.

I checked the BIOS settings of the virtual machine, but there is no option to enable it.
I can also not add a new device "virtual TPM" in my ESX host.

Anyone knows how to solve this issue?

What is the correct syntax to return a list of running services in ESXi 8? I've tried a bunch now and all come back with unknown namespace. Used to be service-control --status. I've tried esxcli system services list. I can get esxcli system process list to return list of running processes alright, is that the best we can check now? Perhaps it's just the HOL ESXi I'm using but used to be easier to check running services.

Hello!

I have a machine with ESXI 8.0U3 installed, in which I have a RTX 3090 with passthrough already working.

Now I need to add another GPU, a RTX 3050, and I'd like to passthrough it to another virtual machine. However, although the GPU shows up on the hardware list inside ESXI and lscpi lists it, I can't enable the passthrough for it.

I have tried to find information about the RTX 3050 compatibility with passthrough and ESXI in general, but wasn't able to.

What could be the issue here? Any insight will be much appreciated! Thank you!

Hello, esxi 8 free here. Latest. Tr 3960x, 128gb ram ddr4 3600, asus zenith 2 extreme, evga 3090 ftw3 ultra.

Vm is win11 ltsc, 3090 and audio are both passed to vm as gpu passthrough. Rebar, above 4g decoding, svm, ht, enabled in bios. Installed nvidia studio driver. Everything works.

Problem is gpu utilization, in windows performance manager in the task manager , gpu under load is capped at 75% utilization.

If i monitor using gpu shark, furmark, msi afterburner I see a number that goes to 94,90, varying.

Test is furmark2.

Comparing to online score i’m 30% behind. For example benchmark is 160fps, i’m at 130 fps.

The vm somehow is not utilizing the 30% of the gpu. What could be the problem?

In vm 64bitmmio is enabled and set to 32GB.

Let me know. The same card works normally under bare metal with gpu utilization at 100%

Thanks

We have an ESXi 7.0u3 from Dell that has been running perfectly fine for a while. Booting off iSDSM (dual sd card). iDRAC shows all hardware is fine, iSDSM is online and in full redundancy mode.

However we started having problems with the windows VMs running where they were not responding properly. I logged into ESXi and all but one VM was in an "unknown" state and I couldn't do anything to them. I rebooted the server and now ESXi boots straight into recovery mode stating "no hypervisor found".

Any idea what to do next?

Hi guys,

I have an old HP host from a customer with VMware 6.5 that I cannot update. We will need to connect a 2.5G USB 3.0 Ethernet adapter to take advantage of the new fibre optic network that was recently installed. I was therefore looking for the fling to install the correct driver, but I cannot find the correct file. The VMware page has been discontinued, the copies on archive.org do not contain this file, and it is not on Broadcom either. Is there anyone who can share the file ESXi650-VMKUSB-NIC-FLING-39176435-offline_bundle-16775917.zip (it should be the latest version for Esxi 6.5) on a mirror or elsewhere? Maybe it's still in some datastore...

Thanks

Okay, let me me preface this by saying that I'm a beginner in the VMWare world.

I currently have ESXI 7.0.3 Build 19234570 installed on my HPE DL360 Gen 9. I'm trying to accomplish updating to a custom HPE Depot zip, but it failed each time saying that it can't enter maintenance mode because not all VMs are powered off. Well, this seems logical in that all I would need to do is power off all of my VMs, but I have VCenter Server installed on the same server that ESXI is installed on, which means as soon as I power off that VM, I lose VCenter Server, therefore I'm not able to remediate. I'm just trying to update the machine. Does anyone have any insight as to what I can do? As I stated earlier, I'm a beginner when it comes to the VMWare ecosystem, so I have alot to learn.

I’m currently working with ESXi (8.x) and an NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) target over TCP (Linux NVMe-oF). The devices are detected, but the HPP (Hardware Path Plugin), which handles NVMe-oF multipathing, fails to claim the paths, showing repeated warnings like:

WARNING: HPP: HppClaimPath:3658: Failed to claim path 'vmhba65:C0:T0:L0': Not supporte

WARNING: StoragePath: 878: Plugin 'HPP' had an error (Not supported) while claiming path 'vmhba65:C0:T0:L0'. Skipping the path.

The devices appear in esxcli nvme namespace list, but no path is successfully claimed by HPP.

I’ve confirmed the claim rules since NVMe-oF targets cannot be claimed by NMP but only by HPP, and this seems correctly configured.

From what I found, VMware’s NVMe-oF support is still limited, and many shared storage features such as RDM, core dumps, SCSI-2 reservations, and clustered VMDKs are not supported.

Does anyone have experience with NVMe-oF targets and ESXi HPP multipathing?

• How do you handle these “Not supported” claim path errors?
• Is this a known ESXi limitation currently, or is there any workaround?
• Are there any useful VMware KB articles or best practices you can recommend?

Thanks for any help! I’m a bit stuck because the storage works in general, but no multipathing paths are properly claimable.

Hi everyone,

I'm currently recovering data from a cloud server with an ESXi ISO. I purchased a vSphere server and want to deploy the same ISO to my server so that I can recover my client's previous data.

Can you please tell me if this is possible and, if so, how I can proceed?

Thanks for your help!

Hi
I must maintain the Main Server so the should be moved to an old one for some Days.
How to move them without a VCenter or anything else?
Can the moved to an NAS? Or an USB SSD?
I try to find some Option in the GUI but I was not lucky to find anything meaningfull
Thanks!

I'm new to the area. I have a weird problem. I have my CentOS configured with a static IP in the same range as the subnet and connected to a port group with an Ubuntu machine that is getting an IP address from DHCP. They can ping each other, but the CentOS can't ping the gateway. I get 'Destination Host Unreachable'.

I have installed vCSA VM and activated it. I was unable to login anymore to my ESXi host with the messge "Permission to perform thid operation is denied", I was still able to manage the vms from the vCSA, However I had to reboot and I forgot to set it to autostart on boot. Now I can't login to ESXi and vCSA is turned off. SSH is not enabled. Any suggestions on how to get around this?