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TSCH-VM

23 posts since
Jul 26, 2005

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Jul 30, 2008 11:51 PM

Which ASUS Mainboards work with ESXi 3.5 ?

Hello,

I'm, using VMWare server right now on some noname Rack-Servers (with ASUS Mainboards inside).

Because I don't want to buy completely new systems, are there any ASUS-Mainboards for ESXi 3.5 ?

Thanks a lot.

Kind regards

TSCH-VM

Dave.Mishchen…

11,904 posts since
Nov 15, 2005

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1. Jul 30, 2008 11:58 PM

in response to: TSCH-VM

Re: Which ASUS Mainboards work with ESXi 3.5 ?

There's nothing supported, but here's a list of white boxes that have been tested - http://www.vm-help.com/Whitebox_HCL.php. If the MB has run ESX 3.5 without any changes, then it should be OK with ESXi. The important things will be the NIC and storage controller. Do you know what your current servers have (and specifically the PCI vender and device ID)?

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GregecSLO

113 posts since
Jun 30, 2008

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2. Jul 31, 2008 12:05 AM

in response to: Dave.Mishchen…

Re: Which ASUS Mainboards work with ESXi 3.5 ?

Hi!

I tested it on:

ASUS P5K

ASUS P5K Premium

Works great, with exception of NIC and Jmicron controller...

You will have to add supported NICs...

You will easy install ESXi from DVD drive, but when installed ESXi will not recognice DVD (Jmicron) so you will have to upload images and install OS from it...

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Dave.Mishchen…

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Nov 15, 2005

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3. Jul 31, 2008 12:20 AM

in response to: GregecSLO

Re: Which ASUS Mainboards work with ESXi 3.5 ?

Which SATA controller does ESXi display for each of these systems?

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GregecSLO

113 posts since
Jun 30, 2008

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4. Jul 31, 2008 12:24 AM

in response to: Dave.Mishchen…

Re: Which ASUS Mainboards work with ESXi 3.5 ?

ESXi displays "2 port SATA IDE controller (ICH9)

On both systems the same...

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tractng

251 posts since
Feb 15, 2007

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5. Aug 12, 2008 11:09 PM

in response to: GregecSLO

Re: Which ASUS Mainboards work with ESXi 3.5 ?

Anybody know that P5K-E (just with the extra E) would work :)? I am running linux ES4.6 and like to format the system to run the free ESXi.

Tnt

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jbusch

8 posts since
Aug 11, 2008

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6. Aug 13, 2008 2:23 AM

in response to: TSCH-VM

Re: Which ASUS Mainboards work with ESXi 3.5 ?

The P5BV-E/SAS works fine for me so far. It's a Xeon board but with ATX form factor. I boot off the LSI 1064E with a 2 drive mirror set, and have 4 more drives attached to the ICH7R configured as "enhanced" which ESXi also sees (still trying to figure out how to use those via RDM).

Using a Xeon X3350 (quad 2.66 45nm) and 8 GB Corsair memory (4x 2GB) I get decent performance for a (relatively) low price.

-jdb

P.S.: the onboard NICs work too.

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ngmartinho

1 posts since
Mar 19, 2007

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7. Aug 21, 2008 7:46 AM

in response to: jbusch

Re: Which ASUS Mainboards work with ESXi 3.5 ?

What about this boards with PCI-X support:

P5E WS PRO ?

P5Q WS ?

Other boards with PCI-X?

Kind Regards,

Martinho.

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trouby

3 posts since
Sep 24, 2008

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8. Sep 24, 2008 12:35 PM

in response to: ngmartinho

Re: Which ASUS Mainboards work with ESXi 3.5 ?

Hey folks,

I was wondering, If I buy a PSE board with two SATA hard drives,, should I buy any external SATA RAID controller for installing ESXI 3.5?

Is there any ASUS motherboard which is more recommended than the PSE?

Thanks,

Asaf.

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Dave.Mishchen…

11,904 posts since
Nov 15, 2005

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9. Sep 24, 2008 12:51 PM

in response to: trouby

Re: Which ASUS Mainboards work with ESXi 3.5 ?

Take a look at the list here to see what sort of ASUS MBs work - http://www.vm-help.com/Whitebox_HCL.php. Is this a test / learning box? If you're considering this for production, then it would be best to stick with the server HCL. If just for test and you need fast disk I/O, then you'd want to get a good SAS/SATA controller with battery backed write cache. Typically, the Intel / nVidia SATA RAID controllers that come on ASUS MBs don't work with ESXi in RAID mode, so you have to run the drives as JBODs.

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trouby

3 posts since
Sep 24, 2008

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10. Sep 25, 2008 2:13 AM

in response to: Dave.Mishchen…

Re: Which ASUS Mainboards work with ESXi 3.5 ?

Hey,

Thanks for the answer,

This is for tests only,

I'm not a hardware professional but according to 'vm-help.com, many boards with Intel ICH9 controller work fine,

ICH9 is just a standard SATA raid controller that should be enough for RAID 1, right?

If it is recognized by ESXI kernel, then I'll be just using it for not making things too complicated (and cheap)

btw, what is JOBDs?

Thanks again,

Asaf.

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Dave.Mishchen…

11,904 posts since
Nov 15, 2005

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11. Sep 25, 2008 12:12 PM

in response to: trouby

Re: Which ASUS Mainboards work with ESXi 3.5 ?

The drivers that come with ESXi don't support host-RAID so the ICH9R controller will only work in IDE mode. Thus you can't do RAID with it. JBOD - just a bunch of disks (i.e. no RAID).