NVIDIA OFED InfiniBand Driver for VMware® ESXi Server

InfiniBand adapter support for VMware ESXi Server 7.0 (and newer) works in Single-Root IO Virtualization (SR-IOV) mode. Single Root IO Virtualization (SR-IOV) is a technology that allows a network adapter to present itself multiple times through the PCIe bus. This technology is used in conjunction with an SR-IOV enabled hypervisor to provide virtual machines direct hardware access to network resources, such as RDMA, delivering high performance to guest applications.

View the matrix of VMware VPI/InfiniBand driver versions vs. the supported hardware and firmware for NVIDIA® products.


Also visit VMware Infrastructure's product page and download page and the VMware vSphere™ product page.




Related Documents


  • Local Area Network (LAN) and Storage Area Network (SAN) functionality is available over unified server I/O using high bandwidth and low latency InfiniBand connectivity
  • Compute & Storage linear scalability across multiple VMs
  • Ability to expose multiple network and storage adapters over a single physical InfiniBand port allowing the same 'look and feel' of traditional storage and network devices
  • Completely transparent to VMs as applications in VMs continue to work over legacy interfaces that have been already qualified on
  • All VMware ESXi Server supported guest operating systems are supported

Mellanox OFED Driver for VMware® ESXi Server

Operating System Supported NICs / Firmware Version Download Documentation /
Release Date
ESXi 7.0 ConnectX-5 / 16.29.1016
ConnectX-5 Ex / 16.29.1016
ConnectX-6 / 20.29.1016		 4.19.71.1 VMware site Release Notes
User Manual
28-April-21

NOTE: Please be advised that NVIDIA has qualified only the official major updates released by VMware. For further information, please contact networking-support@nvidia.com.


  • For the HCL click here. Please note that the HCL includes all the supported NVIDIA VPI controller PCI Express Device IDs (DIDs). Hence, any NVIDIA adapter card with a supported VPI controller is supported as well.
  • For the list of NVIDIA IB/VPI cards and their PCI Device IDs, click here
  • For the list of IB OFED Driver for VMware ESX 3.5 and 4.x, see the Archive Tab

NVIDIA OFED Driver for VMware® ESXi Server

NVIDIA OFED Driver for VMware® ESXi Server
Driver Version ESXi Server Documents
MLNX-OFED ESXi 5.X Driver 1.8.2.0 MLNX-OFED-ESX-1.8.2.0 Documentation Set
1.8.1.0 MLNX-OFED-ESX-1.8.1.0 Documentation Set
1.8.0.0 MLNX-OFED-ESX-1.8.0.0 (Builds: 469512 & 623860) -
IB OFED Driver for VMware ESX/ESXi 4.0 1.4.1-222 IB OFED Drivers v1.4.1-222 for vSphere 4.0
U0 (Build: 164009) and U1 (Build: 208167)
Note: For VMware ESX 4.1 support, please contact Networking-support@nvidia.com.		 -
1.4.1-2.0.000

IB OFED Driver v1.4.1-2.0.000 for ESX/ESXi 4.0
(Build: 164009)

 Documentation Set
IB OFED Driver v1.4.1-2.0.000 for ESX/ESXi 4.0 U1
(Build: 241301)
IB OFED Driver v1.4.1-2.0.000 for ESX/ESXi 4.0 U2
(Build: 261974)
IB OFED Driver v1.4.1-2.0.000 for ESX/ESXi 4.1
(Build: 260247)
IB OFED Driver v1.4.1-2.0.000 for ESX/ESXi 4.1 U1
(Build: 348481)
  Download ESX 4.x Patch -
IB OFED Driver for VMware ESX 3.5 1.2.0 IB OFED v1.2.0 for ESX 3.5
(Build: 64607)		 -
IB OFED v1.2.0 for ESX 3.5 U1
(Build: 82663)
IB OFED v1.2.0 for ESX 3.5 U2
(Build: 110268)
IB OFED v1.2.0 for ESX 3.5 U3
(Build: 123630)
IB OFED v1.2.0 for ESX 3.5 U4
(Build: 153875)

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