Do read the Blog Entry Installing Mellanox ConnectX® EN 10GbE Drivers for VMware® ESX 5.x Server

Step 1: At VMware ESX 5.x Hypervisor,

• Click the F2 button
• Select “Troubleshoot Options”
• “Enable ESXi Shell” and “Enable SSH”

Step 2: Download the VMware ESXi 5.0 Driver for Mellanox ConnectX Ethernet Adapters

Step 3: Unzip the mlx4_en-mlnx-1.6.1.2-offline_bundle-471530.zipEdit

Step 4: The upgrade process is similar to a new install, except the command that should be issued is the following:

#   esxcli software vib upgrade -v {VIBFILE}

In the example above, this would be:

#  esxcli software vib update -v 
/tmp/net-mlx4-en-1.6.1.2-1OEM.500.0.0.406165.x86_64.vib