I tried also to boot from usb-stick on a normal PC (Gigabyte P35-DS4 Rev2 Mainboard) and got the same error message:

Cannot get bank 1 paramaters.

Warning: Bank 1 partition type invalid. Ignoring.

Cannot get bank 2 paramaters.

Warning: Bank 2 partition type invalid. Ignoring.

Panic: No useable banks found.

but on an Dell D620 the USB Stick will boot fine.

I tried everything (latest Firmeware) but it doesn't work on an Gigabyte Mainboard. 

I have been testing the belief that pulling the USB key will pink screen the system, but my test box has been running a week ever since I yanked the USB key. The only (obvious) problem is I can't change the configuration perminantly on it since it won't save anywhere. However, I can change the running configuration. It's actually acting like a tank. I wonder if this can be a different experience depending on how the BIOS handles booting USB from machine to machine, though.

Also, the original Dell 2950s don't seem to have the internal USB ports. The Dell 2950 "III" seems to have this, which is probably a response to HP having put it in their server.

Hope to see some official support later. On the fact that the monitoring on 3i is kind of weak (at this time) we'll be going to the boring ol hard drive install of 3.5, but this has certainly been fun to play with.

Hey nsabinske,

Reading your post, I guess you got your network up and running with the USB-ESX Edition. How did you activate your network card? Unfortunately I cant even setup/configure my network devices...

Just created the stick, booted the system and everything seems to work..except the network is not available. Do you know where I can setup my card?

Greetings

Norman

The shell option has been dropped.

Hi Dave,

thanks for your help. I could add an Intel Pro for this purpose. Currently I am using a Marvell Yukon 88E8055 PCI-E Gigabit. Just thought one could add a driver manually. If there´s a solution just let me know please. I´ll try an Intel Pro meanwhile.

Regards

Norman

I've tried Epox and Gigabyte motherboards to no avail, but it did work on a Panasonic ToughBook, booted but no supported network card, but I've found a Viglen workstations works fine!

Boots and recognises the network card!

I've also found that the following motherboards boot from USB okay and network is supported. (up to 1G networking), But having a few issues setting up local SATA storage using SATA ICH7 controller

Intel® Desktop Board D945GTP

Intel® Desktop Board DQ965GF

Personally I think something like a Thecus cheapo NAS/NFS device would be ideal. 2 x Dual Core Desktop PC's with supported NIC's and there you go. Nice little home cluster setup with DRS and HA to play with.. assuming you have licenses or limited eval.

Hello,

Moved to the ESXi forum.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.

CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354

As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization