Lately I’ve noticed that various people have been hitting my blog through the search string “e1000 VMware issues”, I want to make sure people end up in the right spot so I figured I would write a quick article that points people there. I’ve hit the issues described in the various KB articles myself, and I know how frustrating it can be. The majority of problems seen with the E1000 and E1000E drivers have been solved with the newer releases. I always run the latest and greatest version so it isn’t something I encounter any longer, but you may potentially witness the following:
- vmkernel.log entries with “Heap netGPHeap already at its maximum size. Cannot expand.”
- PSOD with “E1000PollRxRing@vmkernel#nover+”
- vmware.log entries with “[msg.ethernet.e1000.openFailed] Failed to connect ethernet0.”
These problems are witnessed with vSphere 5.1 U2 and earlier and patches have been released to mitigate these problems, if you are running one of those versions either use the patch or preferably upgrade to vSphere 5.1 Update 3 at a minimum when you are still running 5.0 or 5.1, or move up to the latest 5.5 release.
KB articles with more details can be found here:
We actually ran into the issue below when we upgraded our 5.5 hosts to build 2143827. Just an FYI…
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2092809
Thanks, let me add that to the article itself as well. Good pointer, appreciated!
Hi,
Absolutely fabulous article!
Thank you for sharing a wonderful and inspiring article:)
Regards,
Mazid Umar
What are some reasons why someone would want to use the E1000 driver instead of the VMXNET3?