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:

http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/vi_pages/vi_pubs_35_3i_i.html

Dave.Mishchenko gave another helpful link in another thread:

http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/Hardware_support.php

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

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

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.

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.