Connectivity issue when upgrading Dell R620 to ESXi 5.1 build 914609

When building a couple of new ESX hosts based on Dell R620 systems, I used the Dell customized iso VMware-VMvisor-Installer-5.1.0-799733.x86_64-Dell_Customized_RecoveryCD_A01.iso to install ESXi

Those Dell systems had 4 Broadcom nics (2 x 1Gb + 2 x 10Gb) and 2 Intel 10Gb nics

Install went fine, and I decided to upgrade to the latest patches using esxcli since the hosts had no access to vCenter. All went fine till after the reboot. I noticed all Broadcom nics where missing from my hosts, most likely due to a driver issue, so time to investigate. Continue reading