I installed ESXi on a couple HP servers recently and was surprised to see that my quad port NIC was nowhere to be found. Honestly, I don’t recall seeing this before so I was caught a little off guard. The NIC was an HP NC365T and a quick search turns up the following:

http://www.corypratt.com/technology/vmware/adding-hp-nc365t-drivers-to-vmware-esxi/

Basically, install and download the vSphere CLI onto your computer, and download the Intel 82576 and 82580 drivers from:

http://downloads.vmware.com/d/details/esx40_intel_82580_v4002198_dt/ZHcqYmRwakBiZCVodw==

1. Burn the ISO to a CD in order to see the .zip file.

2. Put the ESX host in maintenance mode

3. On the workstation that has the vSphere CLI, execute the command

vihostupdate.pl –server 192.168.10.11 –username root –install –bundle g:\offline-bundle\INT-intel-lad-ddk-igb-2.1.10.2-offline_bundle-268793.zip

4. Enter the root password and press

5. Reboot the ESX host and exit maintenance mode. All NICs should be displayed.