VMware Communities: ESXi on Poweredge 860?

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4,962 Views 16 Replies Last post: Jan 14, 2010 1:34 PM by DSTAVERT

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bytemind

11 posts since
Aug 4, 2008

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Aug 6, 2008 1:53 AM

ESXi on Poweredge 860?

Hi,

I have a Dell PowerEdge 860 with perc SAS raid controller.

Does anyone have a ESXi running on similar hardware?

Thanks, Ebbe, Denmark

Dave.Mishchen…

11,904 posts since
Nov 15, 2005

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1. Aug 6, 2008 9:37 AM

in response to: bytemind

Re: ESXi on Poweredge 860?

Hello Ebbe, welcome to the VMware Community forums. The PE 830 and 840 have been tested - http://www.vm-help.com/Whitebox_HCL.php - you should be OK with the 860. What model of perc controller does it have?

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Thomas_Prophe…

7 posts since
Aug 6, 2008

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2. Aug 6, 2008 1:12 PM

in response to: bytemind

Re: ESXi on Poweredge 860?

HI Bytemind,

Welcome to the forums!

I'm currently using VMWare's ESXi 3.5 Update2 on two Dell 860's successfully. I'm using the Dell SAS 5/iR controller.

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bytemind

11 posts since
Aug 4, 2008

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3. Aug 7, 2008 12:26 AM

in response to: Dave.Mishchen…

Re: ESXi on Poweredge 860?

Thank your for your warm welcome - Especially from a guru

It has the SAS 5/iR Adapter

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bytemind

11 posts since
Aug 4, 2008

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4. Aug 7, 2008 12:25 AM

in response to: Thomas_Prophe…

Re: ESXi on Poweredge 860?

Thank you for your welcome

Well, thats all i wanted to hear!

Thank you!

Ebbe

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Dave.Mishchen…

11,904 posts since
Nov 15, 2005

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5. Aug 7, 2008 12:28 AM

in response to: bytemind

Re: ESXi on Poweredge 860?

Thanks for updating the discussion. Have fun with your install.

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__Tango

8 posts since
Jul 19, 2007

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6. Dec 2, 2008 4:14 PM

in response to: Dave.Mishchen…

Re: ESXi on Poweredge 860?

Just as an FYI: i have NOT been able to get ESX3i to install on a PowerEdge 860 without a raid card (meaning using onboad SATA drives). My machine has 2x160GB SATA drives hooked up directly to the onboard ports. ESX 3i v3.5.0 U3, will not install on this device, it says:

Unable to find a supported device to write the VMware ESX 3i 3.5.0 image to.

Good Luck.

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s1xth

744 posts since
Jul 29, 2008

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7. Dec 2, 2008 4:46 PM

in response to: __Tango

Re: ESXi on Poweredge 860?

You wont have any issue installing on the PE860. I have one running with no problems, but I am using the SAS on board raid controller. Not sure if you can even use those Sata ports that are on board, I never tried them. (and I have a lot of 860's!).

http://www.virtualizationimpact.com http://www.handsonvirtualization.com Twitter: @jfranconi

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__Tango

8 posts since
Jul 19, 2007

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8. Dec 2, 2008 5:47 PM

in response to: s1xth

Re: ESXi on Poweredge 860?

That was my point. Installs using the PERC or SAS card seem to work. Without a PERC or SAS card (using onboard sata) doesn't work. The onboard SATA works fine in other OSes, just not in ESXi.

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Dave.Mishchen…

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Nov 15, 2005

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9. Dec 2, 2008 9:33 PM

in response to: __Tango

Re: ESXi on Poweredge 860?

What model of SATA controller does your 860 have?

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agomezp

55 posts since
Apr 1, 2008

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10. Dec 16, 2008 1:01 PM

in response to: bytemind

Re: ESXi on Poweredge 860?

PowerEdge 860 - ESXi Installable Update 3 or from 120505 to 130755 cause "Fail to find HD Boot partition", the explanation in PowerEdge 860 - ESXi Installable Update 3 (build 123629) or from build 120505 to build 130755 cause "Fail to find HD Boot partition".

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tunasalad

3 posts since
Mar 3, 2009

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11. Mar 3, 2009 7:03 AM

in response to: agomezp

Re: ESXi on Poweredge 860?

We were having the same problem as you initially mentioned. Our Poweredge 860 has two SATA drives but no PERC or SAS raid controller cards installed.

Trying to install ESX3.5i in that scenario always failed, no matter what settings we changed in the BIOS or even after upgrading it to revision A05.

We finally found a workaround to install ESXi3.5 in this scenario:

http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/ESXi_install_to_IDE_drive/ESXi_install_to_IDE_drive.html

Basically you fool the ESX3.5i installer to make it think is being installed to an IDE drive.

This worked at the first shot for us but we are not sure whether there will be any performace implications using this method or not. Any idea?

Thanks!

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Dave.Mishchen…

11,904 posts since
Nov 15, 2005

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12. Mar 3, 2009 4:02 PM

in response to: tunasalad

Re: ESXi on Poweredge 860?

If it's the ICH7 controller that you have then you could modify oem.tgz to load the ata_piix driver instead of the ide driver - see the customizing oem.tgz article on vm-help.com. If you are concerned with performance then the best bet would be a good RAID controller with battery backed write cache.