VMware Communities: Message List - UNSUPPORTED ESXi 3.5u2 Installable on Dell Latitude D630 as portable test/eval/demo

Re: UNSUPPORTED ESXi 3.5u2 Installable on Dell Latitude D630 as portable test/eval/demo

ErikvdGroef — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 20:50:55 GMT

Hi Erik,

Because of the 32 bit operating system that was installed on it i was kind of tricked.

Now i run esx i within workstation but after tomorrow it will be ESX on baremetal!!! NICE

Re: UNSUPPORTED ESXi 3.5u2 Installable on Dell Latitude D630 as portable test/eval/demo

Erik Zandboer — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:17:08 GMT

It has got to be a 64 bit CPU (dualcore right?); ESX4 does not run on 32bit CPIU at all. Maybe you are mixed up with the (ancient) Dell Latitude C series?

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Re: UNSUPPORTED ESXi 3.5u2 Installable on Dell Latitude D630 as portable test/eval/demo

ErikvdGroef — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 17:35:25 GMT

Hello grcumm,

How about the processor, the 630 has a 32 bit proc and vmware needs a 64 bit proc.

Re: UNSUPPORTED ESXi 3.5u2 Installable on Dell Latitude D630 as portable test/eval/demo

grcumm — Fri, 22 May 2009 13:21:03 GMT

I just tried VMware-VMvisor-Installer-4.0.0-164009.x86_64.iso (ESXi 4.0.0-164009) and it worked perfectly with no modifications. AHCI was supported as it was with 3.5.0u4-153875.

Re: UNSUPPORTED ESXi 3.5u2 Installable on Dell Latitude D630 as portable test/eval/demo

grcumm — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 12:43:03 GMT

I apologize for the delay but the forum never notified me of another post and I've been trying to find some time to test this.

I just installed 3.5.0u4-153875 and it recognized the HDD with AHCI enabled (this is a plus for the new version) however I don't see a storage controller for USB or FireWire (IEEE-1394). I believe this would be the key to utilizing storage on USB or FireWire. I did see 3 HBAs on the AHCI controller but only the one target (SATA HDD). The optical (DVD or CD) drive is still inaccessible from ESXi.

I think that if you wanted to utilize USB or FireWire you'd have to utilize a hosted VM system, like VMware Server or VMware Workstation. iSCSI would be the primary external storage for this system unless you're using a D/Dock with a Fibre Channel (FC) card (assuming there exists an FC card that can fit in the D/Dock by length, PCI slot and heat) or if there exists a device that takes the CardBus (CB) port to an external enclosure for a PCI card (which I'd doubt exists) or if there exists a CB card providing a storage adapter compatible with one that is supported.

You could use another laptop using Linux, an iSCSI target daemon and FireWire to attach from ESXi through iSCSI to a FireWire storage device. iSCSI would be theoretically faster (1000 Mbps versus 400 Mbps) but sucks up CPU in TCP and iSCSI calculations (including checksums).

Another thing to consider is that this laptop has a cardbus slot and there are gigabit cardbus adapters but they may or may not be supported by ESXi. This would allow a separate backend (host: Management, storage, VMotion) and frontend (VM) network Unfortunately, I don't have one so I can't test their compatibility.

EDIT1: Also check out: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/180728

Message was edited by: grcumm

Re: UNSUPPORTED ESXi 3.5u2 Installable on Dell Latitude D630 as portable test/eval/demo

randy.castle — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 17:33:18 GMT

How about firewire? My D630 has firewire connection.

Re: UNSUPPORTED ESXi 3.5u2 Installable on Dell Latitude D630 as portable test/eval/demo

grcumm — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 18:08:13 GMT

It appears that the SATA HDD and network (iSCSI, NFS, etc) are the only storage options.

Re: UNSUPPORTED ESXi 3.5u2 Installable on Dell Latitude D630 as portable test/eval/demo

Anders Gregersen — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 18:04:21 GMT

That is great news, I've been looking for a laptop that works out of the box. Thanks!

UNSUPPORTED ESXi 3.5u2 Installable on Dell Latitude D630 as portable test/eval/demo

grcumm — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 17:22:31 GMT

I did this more as a demonstation to myself to see if it was posible.

Platform: Dell Latitude D630, BIOS A12, Intel Core2 Duo T7100, 1GiB RAM (yes, VERY low), ICH8M chipset, BCM5755M onboard NIC.
BIOS Config: REQUIRES change of SATA operation to ATA (Onboard Devices/SATA Operation; not AHCI; requires that Flash Module is disabled); Recommend enabling Multi Core Support (Performance) and Virtualization(POST Behavior). Uncertain on Dynamic Acceleration and SpeedStep Enable (both under Performance; I have both enabled at the moment).

Installed directly from CD (VMware-VMvisor-InstallerCD-3.5.0_Update_2-110271.i386.iso) with no issues to the SATA HDD. Automatically created a VMFS datastore in the free space of the HDD (as expected).

As to be expected, the SATA optical drive is not usable within ESXi.