I am trying to boot 3.5 from cd on this T105 and frezzing up on

ATA3: DEV0 atapi, MAX UDMA /100

ANY IDEA?

yeah what is going on? 3i seems to work fine but i want to run 3.5.

I puchased the Dell PowerEdge T105 to use for VMware ESX 3.5, and I have experienced the following:

The server has SATA power connectors only, therefore you must use drives that have SATA power. Sure there are adapters to convert SATA power connections, however if you decide to use them you will have to install your hard drive in the 5.25" bay. When attached to the standard hard drive bays the connector will not allow you to close the case.

If you buy a memory upgrade, remember that this model supports 800MHz memory, DDR2 PC2-6400.

There is an onboard USB port that can be used for an ESX Server 3i installation.

I have not been able to successfully use an VMware ESX Server 3.5 Installer CD. The USB Keyboard locks up during installation. The Server does not include PS/2 ports.

You cannot boot from a USB device if the SATA controller is disabled.

If you unplug (not disable) the SATA controller you can boot from the USB device.

If you boot from the USB device and use the nousbboot option by pressing SHIFT+O at the boot menu, you will receive the following error. PANIC: Failed to find SIMULATED boot partition.

If you boot from the USB device, you will receive the following error: PANIC: Failed to find USB partition.

I have attempted the installation with a reliable LSI Logic LSI21320-IS Adapter Card, as well as an Adaptec 29320 PCI-X1 card.

The BIOS offers limited functionality.

I have ESXi 3.5 U2 running now for a couple of months (started just after the time-bomb-bug) on my DELL Poweredge T105.

I wrote about it on my blog on http://blog.virtualarchitect.nl. I am not experiencing any problems with this version of ESX(i). I recognize the issue about the network and SATA controller being unavailable, but this only happens if you use an older version of ESX. Because the internal broadcom networkadapter is relatively new this device is not supported in older versions. I told the BIOS to boot from USB first (If I recall correct, this option is 'hidden' beneath the SATA option).

I have made no modifications to the system other than adding extra memory which I ordered through a local computer store. So no disabling of devices etc. I use local storage at the moment with the SATA controller that's part of the standard configuration (no SAS -RAID controller).

(update: changed url because blog moved to other url)

Message was edited by: gklooste