Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 with VMWARE ESXI 6.5 or 6.7

When I setup ESXI 6.5 I found one of my network cards was not found. I could see that ESXI was aware of it by listing the adapters from the command line:

lspci -v | grep -A1 -i eithernet

This solution will work but does require you to allow ESXI to use Community Supported VIB’s. If your happy with this, here it goes:

Run this from the command line:

esxcli software acceptance set --level=CommunitySupported

You should then be told the host acceptance level has changed.

esxcli software vib install -d https://vibsdepot.v-front.de -n net55-r8168

Now reboot the host.

You should now see it under the physical NIC’s.