VMware Communities: Message List - Dell Optiplex 960 working on ESXi

Re: Dell Optiplex 960 working on ESXi

dbenton — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 13:43:49 GMT

Nope. I did that. The BIOS is set to RAID Autodetect / ACHI which states RAID is signed drives otherwise ACHI.

Each drive states btoh SATA drives are controlled by the ACHI BIOS.

Re: Dell Optiplex 960 working on ESXi

MrJinx2008 — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 09:09:26 GMT

You probably missed this step from the startpost:

In your bios don't forget to disable all things you don't need like onboard network/soundcard. And make sure you use AHCI for your harddisk.

Re: Dell Optiplex 960 working on ESXi

Dave.Mishchenko — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 03:39:00 GMT

The ESXi ICH driver doesn't support RAID so you'll have to change that in the BIOS. You'll typically IDE or AHCI. If you pick IDE you may have to use the install on IDE instructions that you'll find on vm-help.com.

Re: Dell Optiplex 960 working on ESXi

dbenton — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 03:18:59 GMT

Thanks for the link...

RESULTS. My guess is it's the one in BOLD.

~ # lspci -v
00:00.00 Host bridge Bridge: Intel Corporation
Class 0600: 8086:2e10
00:01.00 PCI bridge Bridge: Intel Corporation
Class 0604: 8086:2e11
00:02.00 VGA compatible controller Display controller: Intel Corporation
Class 0300: 8086:2e12
00:02.01 Display controller Display controller: Intel Corporation
Class 0380: 8086:2e13
00:03.00 Communication controller Communication controller: Intel Corporation
Class 0780: 8086:2e14
00:03.02 IDE interface Mass storage controller: Intel Corporation
Class 0101: 8086:2e16
00:03.03 Serial controller Communication controller: Intel Corporation
Class 0700: 8086:2e17
00:26.00 USB Controller Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation
Class 0c03: 8086:3a67
00:26.01 USB Controller Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation
Class 0c03: 8086:3a68
00:26.02 USB Controller Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation
Class 0c03: 8086:3a69
00:26.07 USB Controller Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation
Class 0c03: 8086:3a6c
00:28.00 PCI bridge Bridge: Intel Corporation
Class 0604: 8086:3a70
00:28.01 PCI bridge Bridge: Intel Corporation
Class 0604: 8086:3a72
00:29.00 USB Controller Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation
Class 0c03: 8086:3a64
00:29.01 USB Controller Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation
Class 0c03: 8086:3a65
00:29.02 USB Controller Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation
Class 0c03: 8086:3a66
00:29.07 USB Controller Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation
Class 0c03: 8086:3a6a
00:30.00 PCI bridge Bridge: Intel Corporation 82801BA/CA/DB/EB PCI Bridge
Class 0604: 8086:244e
00:31.00 ISA bridge Bridge: Intel Corporation
Class 0601: 8086:3a14
00:31.02 RAID bus controller Mass storage controller: Intel Corporation

Class 0104: 8086:2822*

00:31.03 SMBus Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation
Class 0c05: 8086:3a60
03:00.00 Ethernet controller Network controller: Intel Corporation 82572EI Gigabit Ethernet Controller vmnic0
Class 0200: 8086:10b9

Re: Dell Optiplex 960 working on ESXi

Dave.Mishchenko — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 03:06:49 GMT

Would you be able to post the PCI id for your controller - http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/find_PCI_ID.php?

Re: Dell Optiplex 960 working on ESXi

dbenton — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 22:05:36 GMT

I've followed your instructions but ESX3.5i will not see the disk storage. My simple.map matched your description exactly. My pci.ids file does not have a 3582 or 5200.

Any suggestions?

Re: Dell Optiplex 960 working on ESXi

nitehawke — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:37:38 GMT

Bummer...

If you find out anything else, please post to this thread. I've got a few Studio 540's that have Q8200 proc's in them which means no Hyper-V either because these processors did not have Intel's Virtualization Technology (!!)

Re: Dell Optiplex 960 working on ESXi

keying — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:31:54 GMT

Nope, never did find a satisfactory solution. Even loading up these cheap PCI SiI3512 cards wasnt that great either... got random hangs and freezes.

Our next step is to try a 3Ware PCI card and see if a "real" SATA card delivers performance.

If that doesn't work, then we'll run Windows on these

Re: Dell Optiplex 960 working on ESXi

nitehawke — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:23:23 GMT

keying,

Did you ever find a solution? I've got a Dell Studio 540 and am also trying to install ESXi without any success because it can't detect the ICH10 controller. Darn Dell for eliminating AHCI in the BIOS.

Re: Dell Optiplex 960 working on ESXi

keying — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 23:28:26 GMT

Yeah, I tried loading ata_piix along with the other alternatives listed in the file, none of them worked any better

Re: Dell Optiplex 960 working on ESXi

Dave.Mishchenko — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 23:10:13 GMT

You might try editing the files to load the ata_piix driver for the controller when you have it in ATA mode.

Re: Dell Optiplex 960 working on ESXi

keying — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 22:48:59 GMT

I'm starting to realize that AHCI is the key.

The Dell 540 only supports RAID and ATA as the SATA mode. No AHCI option.

Re: Dell Optiplex 960 working on ESXi

MrJinx2008 — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 13:17:16 GMT

Lspci recognized it as 3a02.
Did you enable AHCI in bios?

Re: Dell Optiplex 960 working on ESXi

keying — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 09:46:59 GMT

MrJinx, was your ICH10R recognized as 3a02 or 3a3e?

I'm trying to install ESXi onto a Dell Studio 540 that has the ICH10R, too, but lspci shows the controller being recognized as a 3a3e.

Re: Dell Optiplex 960 working on ESXi

nick.couchman — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 18:52:20 GMT

I've run ESXi on the Dell Optiplex 755 machines - the onboard GigE network card even works! Not sure about the SATA controller - I was just booting off a USB thumb drive.

Dell Optiplex 960 working on ESXi

MrJinx2008 — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 16:57:54 GMT

You can get ESX 3.5i running on this great new machine from Dell with a few adjustments.
I've ordered it with the Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 3.33GHz + 8MB memory.

First you need to disable the onboard network and order a supported network card. I ordered a Intel Pro/1000 PT network card which fits in the PCIe slot.

Next you'll need ESX3.5i to recognize the onboard ICH10R (disk) controller. This may be a bit hard if you don't know linux, but there is a great tutorial on: http://vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/customize_oem_tgz.php

To help you with this, all you have to do is add the following PCI id's:

In simple.map
after 8086:3200 and before 8086:7010 add
8086:3a02 0000:0000 storage ahci

In pci.ids
after 3582 and before 5200 add
3a02 ICH10(R)

NOTE: Don't use the ICH10_oem.tgz file that is provided on that page, it won't work for your Dell.

In your bios don't forget to disable all things you don't need like onboard network/soundcard. And make sure you use AHCI for your harddisk.

Final tip: use the USB boot for ESX3.5i

The best part is that the Dell Optiplex 960 is very energy-friendly! Idle it runs at 36 Watt which makes this the ultimate whitebox for me.