ESXi 3.5 U2 Install on Hp Proliant server???

[mallison]

Ok to start im sorta new to esx products but im very familiar with vmware server. What i would like to do is install esxi on one of the 4 physical machines that i have, preferrably my dl360 g3. If anyone could help me with this and let me know if its possible since ive looked around online and have found where some people have mentioned that they have done this and some say that it wouldnt work?

My hardware is listed below

1. DL380 2x xeon 2.8g / 2g memory / iLO

2. DL380 1x xeon 2.4g / 1g memory / iLO

3. DL360 2x xeon 2.8g / 4g memory / iLO

4. Custom - 1x xeon dual core 2.4g with virtualization tech / 4g memory / P5M2-E motherboard with sata raid and a addonics sata card / dual gigabit nics. (not really looking to use this since it has all of my storage on it, about 2TB in Raid 5, ive been told i cant give access to a physical partition)

Like i said i would prefer it to be on server #3 or even #4 as long as i can have a vm with dual nics bound to seperate physical nics on the host. I'm looking to do this pretty soon if possible. As far as my overall setup right now i have a 2003 - DC/GC/DNS/DHCP/Anti-virus/Backup server/print server, another 2003- DC/GC/DNS/RRAS/WSUS/file server/Exchange 2003 server (this server will be gone shortly as im upgrading to exchange 2007 and moving up to 2003x64 member server) i also have a 2003 - Webserver/WSS/RRAS (in place to replace the other with exchange)/VMware Server/ server, and also a 2003 - mssql/mysql/ip pbx/.

I'm looking to move some of those other roles onto seperate machines and since im taking down the 2003 exchange box i dont want wsus and the other stuff on it so i want to bring a few other vm's up for those services.

Just in case someone asks, all of these machines have gigabit networking and i have a gigabit dell switch.

[Schorschi]

For anything that is production or critical and not in a crash & burn lab, you have to stay within the VMware HCL. I don't have the HCL at my fingers, but I don't recall from memory if DL 360 is supported. I suspect it may. You have said nothing about what your DASD configuration is, for the ESX OS load or landing zone. What is the DASD configuration on the DL 360s?

[jbusch]

What I learned from here is that if it is in the ESX HCL, you have a good chance it works with ESXi too.

DL380 G3 + G4 are in the HCL for ESX 3.5, the DL380 G5 is in the HCL for ESX and ESXi.

DL360 G3/G4/G4p are in ESX HCL, G5 in ESX and ESXi.

You might want to read the footnotes for these servers and look up your storage controllers and NICs too:

Dave.Mishchenko gave another helpful link in another thread:

Note that there is a special HP version of the ESXi iso, which gives you some HP specific info in the health tab of VI client.

I will be trying five oldish Proliants too once the customer gives me the "go". The plan is to sneak in the free ESXi and if they like it, upgrade

So if you try ESXi on your DL360s/380s I'd sure like to hear about your experiences.

Cheers,

-jdb

[mallison]

The dl360 is not on the hcl for "esxi" however it is for esx. The nics on all of the servers are, hp nc7781 gigabit. The drive config for the dl360 has 2 ultra 320 scsi's, 1x 36gb and 1x 72gb. (no raid) the controller is a smart array 5i.

Here is a link to the an overlook of the server specs. = DL360 G3

[mallison]

Ok for the second link you gave me (very helpful i might add) my controller is listed, even down to the device id's. So far its looking as if it might be a go. The only thing im not sure about would be the nics or anything else on the server?

And yes i did notice the hp version of the installable and was going to give that one a try also, as that info is very handy at times.

Does anyone know if the current downloads for esxi install have been patched to fix vmwares issue with the licensing that occurred lately?

And i will be more than glad to let anyone know about my experience doing this, and if you or anyone else does it id love to hear from you also, but this is still in the research phase for right now, that machine is a working database server (although a small one) and also runs vmware server on it which i need right now because i am upgrading from exchange 2003 to 2007 and i only have 1 x64 machine which exchange 2003 is on so i have to convert the physical exchange box to a vm and run it until i can complete the miagration.

[hicksj]

FWIW, we had ESXi 3.5u2 install fine on DL360 G3. Unfortunately, it did not install on DL360 G4 - complaining that it could not detect any storage (must be issue with integrated controller).

Message was edited by: hicksj

Scratch that. The Dl360 G4 was fine. Problem was that we didn't have an array configured! D'oh! All good now.

[jbusch]

I wouldn't worry too much about the NICs, if they don't work you can always put in a cheap Intel Pro/1000 or two (ESXi has very nice multi-NIC support).

Since hicksj gave us some good news on the DL360 G3+G4 (thanks hicksj!) I'd go for it.

And yes, the current downloads are at build 110271, which fixes the timebomb. I didn't verify if they have the HP iso up too by now, but I think I read they do.

I don't know when I'll be allowed to try "my" Proliants, but I'll gladly report about it.

Good luck !

-jdb

[hicksj]

No problem. FYI, we installed the version with integrated HP agents. They just made the refresh version that included the HP agent available within the last day or so.

[mallison]

Thats awesome, im glad to hear that! were you able to use the drive onboard to host the vm's or did you use external storage? And im guessing you got the nics to work fine?

[mallison]

So are you saying you installed ESXi onto a dl360? with the hp agents? If so i think i will go forward with this, i would have already done this yesterday but i spent 14hrs miagrating to exchange 2007 with physical machines, such a pain, would have been half the time with vm's

[hicksj]

Yes, on (both G3 & G4) DL360 we used: ESX Server 3i Installable with HP Insight Management providers, available at the download page. Also loaded on ML370 I believe.

For the storage, yes, we used the internal storage (no external drive cage or iSCSI). Though, I don't see why those other options wouldn't work. These were old systems we were tinkering with in the lab... We've yet to really test performance or anything, (I'm not expecting anything special), we just needed some extra resources for some R&D work.

[mallison]

Well great sounds awesome! Did it give you any problems or fits to install on them, or did you have to do anything special to install? Or just throw in the cd and go to town? (im hoping)

Im only looking to run about 2-4 vm's on my machine. My little database server, a ippbx system, a wsus server, and maybe a second DC/GC/DNS since i took the other one down.

Sounds like i will attempting this friday morning!

[hicksj]

No problems that we've noticed so far. (Install is a 5 minute process... Insert disk. Go.)

I'll take a look at the logs and see if anything behind the scene is complaining. If so, I'll let you know.

[mallison]

Ok sounds great, have you had a chance to get any vm's up and running yet? good to hear its running with no probs so far, maybe this will be supported hardware soon. Hopefully this will go smooth for me and i can look toward putting this on the dl380's since as far as i know they have the same raid controller and nics. I'd like to have esxi running on these hp's and the g3s are very cheap to come by on ebay and the g4's and getting that way also, you can even find a g5 here and there pretty cheap.

I will prob start working on this thursday converting the physical machine to a vm and then go for the move friday morning

[mallison]

Ok just to update, i installed with the hp version and it took only about 15mins from the time i turned the machine on until i was ready to connect with vi client!! Another 1hr of waiting for a vm to convert from vmware server to esxi and i was up and running. this was super simple!

ESXi was able to see both hard drives and both nics along with the correct processors and memory, but just to clarify i am using a Hp Proliant DL360 Generation 3.

Now i just have another question which i will post in another topic about mounting to a file share using esxi to server 2003 x64?

[dpuckett]

@mallison

Have you found a way to do hardware monitoring on your HP DL 360 G3's yet? I have been struggling to find a way to do this. CIM does not appear to support the G3. There is no SNMP support and ILO did not work for me either. I just want to know if a hard drive or PS fails. Any tips would be appreciated.

[mallison]

Well i have the hp version installed but i only get very little info on the system, nothing like a regular hp system management homepage. However iLO should work as it is completely seperate of the OS. As far as i have seen and messed with currently, iLO is about the only way to see harware information on the system.

Just make sure you have your iLO port hooked up to your network with a dhcp server available and then watch to see what new ip shows up and that should be your iLO interface and then just login with your credentials. If you dont know the login, then reboot and reset as the server boots.

If you need any help just holler, of if i didnt answer your question completely

[dpuckett]

I have iLO configured and it shows up in HPSIM ok but unfortunately I still do not receive any hardware information. I tried to pull a disk from the RAID and did not receive an alert. Its possible I have iLO misconfigured but I have everything set as far as I can see. The SNMP trap test from ILO page works fine but still no hardware alerts.

[mallison]

Hmm well i have not tried to set it up to get message notifications from iLO, ive only just looked at the logs to see whats going on, but tomorrow i will look at mine and see what all there is.

[jiths]

CIM works in ESX3i if your server supports IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface the embedded health management).In HP the IPMI support is from G5 servers onwards (ILO2 onwards). The HP DL360G3 and even G4 doesn't support IPMI (remember only ILO is there in these servers).So the as per my knowledge the only option available for you to monitor server health is to install ESX Classic version (old ESX which is installed on harddisk, I think this is still not free) and then install HP management agents for ESX. The HP agents will install the health monitoring drivers and you will get a nice web tool called HPSMH to monitor the server health.