Install the NIC Driver on ESXi

Obtain a list of network interfaces on the ESXi host.
Log in to the ESXi host CLI.

Use the following command to return a list of network interfaces:

$ 
esxcli network nic list
Determine the driver version for a particular interface.
You can use either
ethtool
or
esxcli
to determine the currently-installed driver version. The following example uses vNIC4 and returns driver version 3.21.6.
ethtool—

ethtool -l 

<nic-name>

$ 
ethtool -I vNIC4 
driver: ixgbe 
version: 3.21.6iov 
firmware-version: 0x80000389  
bus-info: 0000:04:00.0 

esxcli—

esxcli network nic get -n 

<nic-name>

$  
esxcli network nic get -n vNIC4 
   Advertised Auto Negotiation: true 
   Advertised Link Modes:  
   Auto Negotiation: true 
   Cable Type:  
   Current Message Level: 7 
   Driver Info:  
         Bus Info: 0000:04:00.0 
         Driver: ixgbe 
         Firmware Version: 0x80000389 
         Version: 3.21.6iov 
   Link Detected: false 
   Link Status: Down  
   Name: vNIC4 
   PHYAddress: 0 
   Pause Autonegotiate: true 
   Pause RX: true 
   Pause TX: true 
   Supported Ports: FIBRE 
   Supports Auto Negotiation: true 
   Supports Pause: true 
   Supports Wakeon: false 
   Transceiver: external 
   Wakeon: None 
Install the new driver.
Download the ixgbe 4.4.1 driver from the VMware website. Extract the contents to a local directory and find the .zip or .vib files for your driver.
Create a new folder in your ESXi host datastore.
Copy the local .zip or .vib file you extracted to the new folder in your ESXi host datastore.
Enable maintenance mode on the ESXi host.
Use one of the following commands to install the new driver, using -d for .zip files, or -v for .vib files.
$ 
esxcli software vib install -d 
<path to driver .zip file>

$ 
esxcli software vib install -v 
<path to driver .vib file>
You must specify the absolute path to the .zip or .vib file. For example:
$ esxcli software vib install -d  "/vmfs/volumes/Datastore/
DirectoryName/
DriverName.zip"
Verify the VIB installation.
$ esxcli software vib list
Reboot the ESXi host.