This is more a note for me. I’m always forgetting this. Most motherboards use a Realtek chip so the following will get it going in most cases. You are going to need to reboot so make sure all clients are stopped.

Grab https://vibsdepot.v-front.de/depot/bundles/net55-r8168-8.039.01-napi-offline_bundle.zip

Pop it in your datastore, in my case it goes (with other bits I need) in the first datastore, eg the default one called datastore1.

Enable SSH server in BOTH services and firewall, configureation -=> security profile. If you plan on using SSH after this make sure that you set SSH server to ‘Start with host’ else it’ll be gone when you reboot.

SSH into the server

esxcli software acceptance set –level=CommunitySupported

esxcli software vib install -d /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/scratch/net55-r8168-8.039.01-napi-offline_bundle.zip

reboot

Once the server reboots your NIC should show.