6.0

The following NIC types are supported:
E1000E
Emulated version of the Intel 82574 Gigabit Ethernet NIC. E1000E is the
default adapter for Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012.
E1000
Emulated version of the Intel 82545EM Gigabit Ethernet NIC, with drivers
available in most newer guest operating systems, including Windows XP and
later and Linux versions 2.4.19 and later.
Flexible
Identies itself as a Vlance adapter when a virtual machine boots, but
initializes itself and functions as either a Vlance or a VMXNET adapter,
depending on which driver initializes it. With VMware Tools installed, the
VMXNET driver changes the Vlance adapter to the higher performance
VMXNET adapter.
Vlance
Emulated version of the AMD 79C970 PCnet32 LANCE NIC, an older 10
Mbps NIC with drivers available in 32-bit legacy guest operating systems. A
virtual machine congured with this network adapter can use its network
immediately.
VMXNET
Optimized for performance in a virtual machine and has no physical
counterpart. Because operating system vendors do not provide built-in
drivers for this card, you must install VMware Tools to have a driver for the
VMXNET network adapter available.
VMXNET 2 (Enhanced)
Based on the VMXNET adapter but provides high-performance features
commonly used on modern networks, such as jumbo frames and hardware
ooads. VMXNET 2 (Enhanced) is available only for some guest operating
systems on ESX/ESXi 3.5 and later.
VMXNET 3
A paravirtualized NIC designed for performance. VMXNET 3 oers all the
features available in VMXNET 2 and adds several new features, such as
multiqueue support (also known as Receive Side Scaling in Windows), IPv6
ooads, and MSI/MSI-X interrupt delivery. VMXNET 3 is not related to
VMXNET or VMXNET 2.
SR-IOV passthrough
Representation of a virtual function (VF) on a physical NIC with SR-IOV
support. The virtual machine and the physical adapter exchange data
without using the VMkernel as an intermediary. This adapter type is suitable
for virtual machines where latency might cause failure or that require more
CPU resources.
SR-IOV passthrough is available in ESXi 5.5 and later for guest operating
systems Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and later, and Windows Server 2008 R2
with SP2. An operating system release might contain a default VF driver for
certain NICs, while for others you must download and install it from a
location provided by the vendor of the NIC or of the host.
For information about assigning an SR-IOV passthrough network adapter to
a virtual machine, see the vSphere Networking documentation.
For network adapter compatibility considerations, see the VMware Compatibility Guide at
hp://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility.
vSphere Single Host Management - VMware Host Client
56 VMware, Inc.