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Intelligent NIC Installation and Tuning Guide
NetXen, Inc.
4. Pre-Installation Guidelines
4.3
Windows Guidelines
The following material should be read before starting a Windows installation.
The following is a brief summary of Windows installation guidelines.
Windows service pack requirement.
Windows host memory requirement.
Location of auto-load firmware file.
Each of these guidelines is described in more detail below.
1
SP2 (Service Pack) Support: SP2 must be installed for the latest Windows Server
fixes.
2
Host Memory Support: The current release of NetXen Windows driver supports less
than 32 GB of RAM. If the host system has 32 GB or more of RAM, reduce the host
memory to be less than 32 GB.
Under Windows, you may modify BOOT.INI file with "/maximum=31744" option, which
limits the amount of RAM to 31 GB.
1
3
Auto-load Firmware Location: Firmware ROM image file, nxromimg.bin, will be placed
in the C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers directory.
4.4
VMware Guidelines
The following material should be read before starting a VMware installation.
The following is a brief summary of VMware installation guidelines.
Currently supported OS versions.
System requirements.
NetXen driver support in VMware ESX 3.5.
Verify NetXen NIC firmware version.
Each of these guidelines is described in more detail below.
1
NetXen driver and firmware is supported on VMware ESX 3.5 OS release.
2
System Requirements:
NetXen Driver Name
-- unm_nic (Included in the ESX 3.5 OS Release)
NetXen Driver Version
-- 3.4.115 (Included in the ESX 3.5 OS Release)
NetXen Firmware Version
2
-- 3.4.115 or later GA release versions
NetXen Firmware Update Tool -- Not included on the ESX 3.5 OS Release
Host Memory
-- Supports less than 32GB of RAM for the 3.4.115
driver version
1
1. Check with NetXen for an updated driver at [email protected].
2. Required to be flashed on the card for VMware support.
