Aquantia AQC108 No Network Status LEDs

Recent experience with an Aquantia AQtion AQC108 5G network card that was integrated in a motherboard (Supermicro X11SRA-F).    Plugging in an ethernet cable would not activate the port (status LEDs would not light up on either the NIC or the switch), so the NIC appeared dead.  However when booting into ESXi 6.7 the NIC would be detected as AQC108 NBase-T/IEEE 802.3bz Ethernet Controller [AQtion] but not be listed under Networking – Physical NICs indicating that no driver was found.  Turns out this NIC needs an OS that has a driver installed before the LEDs will activate. For example with the ESXi host machine the NIC was set up as Passthrough to a guest running Windows Server 2019 (which has the drivers built in).  The link LEDs then began working and the NIC functioned normally in the Windows guest.