Grimfish

Many thanks for the info. I have just ordered 2 P5BV/SAS MBs for ESXi.

Cheers

Hi meisterw,

Have you tried the lastest ESXi version as VMware have only just released ICH10 chipset support in release ESXi Update 4. Also have a look at these sites as they offer some really good tips for getting ESXi to run on non HCL hardware. I recently installed ESXi on an AMD board with an nForce chipset that ESXi didn't see the storage on under normal circumstances. PM me if you need extra help on it. Here are the web pages I found very helpful.

http://www.squishnet.com/?p=17 How to install for USB (This saved me burning about 20 odd useless CD's)

http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/customize_oem_tgz.php This is the site that has many details about the whole process (scroll down a bit and have a good read)

http://www.acronymlabs.com/ This is the site to get the customized OEM.TGZ file. The people that wrote these files are pure genius (I am only spreading the word of their excellent work)

http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/find_PCI_ID.php A useful tip if needed but the above should help most.

In short you boot from a USB drive with the custom OEM.TGZ file, this allows you to see the storage during the install process. When this completes I used a Ubuntu CD to boot and DELETED (yes delete first) then copied over the custom OEM.TGZ file to hypervison1 partion then rebooted again and presto!!! working ESXi

Good luck

Cheers

did

Silicon Image 3114 work with raid with two hdd

I have tested vSphere 4 on a ML115 G1 and it works fine. Nice

Erik,

Would you be kind enough to share how you were able to install the Quad Port 82576 network adapter in ESXi 4 build 164009?

I have tried the pci.ids and simple.map method (oem.tgz) but the network card does not function. I'm actually using the Intel card and not the Supermicro card if that makes a difference.

Product:
http://support.intel.com/products/server/adapters/gb-ET-Quad-Port/gb-ET-Quad-Port-overview.htm

pci.ids entry (numerically inserted within the list):
8086 10e8 82576 Gigabit Network Connection
8086 a02c Gigabit ET Quad Port Server Adapter

simple.map entry (numerically inserted within the list):
8086:10e8 0000:0000 network igb.o

When I issue the lspci or lspci -n or lspci -v everything looks correct yet the card does not show up in vSphere nor function. When viewing the log it states the driver has not claimed any devices. Searching for a more recent driver, the sourceforge project http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=42302&package_id=237808 has an updated driver 1.3.19.3 yet I am not skilled in complying a driver for use in ESXi.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Albert

When issuing:
vmkload_mod /usr/lib/vmware/vmkmod/igb.o

The messages file contains the entry:
WARNING: Mod: 3117: Module <igb> already loaded, aborting.

The attached excerpt of /var/log/messages (during boot process) is attached for additional review.

vSphere CLI 4.0 was obtained from http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vcli/ then clicking the Downloads link. (It was hard for me to find this link and the host's link points to some non-existent page at VMWare!)

The Windows version was installed on an XP SP3 machine running under Fusions on a MAC. Maintenance mode needs to be enabled on the ESXi host. This was accomplished in the vSphere client <host>/Summary tab Commands section.

Per the directions, the file named INT-intel-lad-ddk-igb-1.3.19.12-offline_bundle-166506.zip was extracted from the ISO image. For simplicity this was extracted to the tools default installation directory C:\Program Files\VMWare\VMWare vSphere CLI\bin.

Now that the host and file are ready, the command was run from DOS in the above bin directory:
-one line start-
vihostupdate.pl --server x.x.x.x --username root --install --bundle INT-intel-lad-ddk-igb-1.3.19.12-offline_bundle-166506.zip
-one line end-
The above command process took just under three minutes to complete. The x.x.x.x value is the IP of your ESXi host installation. The script prompted for the password when run.

I did a clean install (to a USB flash drive) and applied the update. What was noticed is that the pci.ids and simple.map file did not include the updated device descriptions meaning that vSphere listed the card as unknown (but it still loaded the driver). Adding the entries to the files will then yield a normal naming convention at vSphere. The attached file is taken from the sourceforge project listed in my above post but be aware that the update version is newer than the projects posting. It is assumed that the later VMWare version of the file would also include 1.3.19.3 descriptions and card support.

Dave, I want to thank you for your help in this matter. You deserve the Expert rating!