VMware ESXi NIC drivers

Here are common types of modern VMware ESXi NIC can be used when creating a VM:

Flexible: Vlance (emulated AMD 79C970 PCnet32 10Mb NIC) or VMXNET(When vmtools installed)

E1000:  Gigabit NIC, emulated Intel 82545EM

VMXNET 2(Enhanced): Gigabit NIC based on VMXNET

VMXNET 3: 10G NIC


For CentOS/RHEL 6, VMXNET3 NIC driver can be compiled from kernel source with option "VMXNET3".
/lib/modules/{kernel-ver}/kernel/driver/net/vmxnet3.ko

For VMXNET2, vmxnet.ko can be installed when vmtools installed.
/lib/modules/{kernel-ver}/misc/vmxnet.ko

You also can compile vmxnet.ko from the extracted vmxnet nic source code in vmtools tarball.

More features for each NICs please refer VMware KB: Choosing a network adapter for your virtual machine