Hi,

Not being able to install graphically should pose no problem. Both text and graphical install is possible without a mouse. I would try to disconnect any not needed hardware, including SATA (I would disable it in BIOS). Just to get an initial install done. After that, test away... For now, I think you should try to minimize your devices and hopefully you'll end up disabling the one that caues the freeze...

Hi,

Very strange. Haven't you simply tried to connect no mouse at all? Having a mouse in ESX is pretty useless anyway (apart from maybe the graphical installer).

On the other board, you have three SCSI disks, but when they are formatted the system crahses, or does ESX install now?

Not having SATA support is no surprise; the number of supported controllers is very limited. ESX should install on IDE, but you cannot format VMFS on IDE (which is needed for your VMs). So you'll end up needing SCSI anyway. And a system crash at this point? My bet is that a linux install (redhat or the like) will crash as well.

You could also give ESX 3i a try, boot from a stick... ??

VMware has not made the install difficult, it simply relies on having supported hardware. Do not expect an easy ride on a whitebox, it's possible, but there are no guarantees. I assure you, take hardware that is on the HCL and all will be fine. Problem is, you don't want that kind of hardware powered up next to your bed

The CDROM drive is the problem I guess. Don't go for installs from USB sticks. Try and find an IDE CDROM instead, and do a "next-next-finish" install. I have seen this problem with certain servers (on the HCL!!!) where mounting an ISO to the remote management interface presents the exact same problem. It boots initially, and when it is all ready to go and install ESX it cannot find the (in my case emulated) CDROM drive. Very annoying. It appears to be a problem with the driver (or rather missing the driver) used to access the CDROM drive.

I have had ESX 3.5 running succesfully on a hyperthreading P4 (2.8GHz) mainboard without problems, so a mainboard from 2005 is not that old in my opinion

Dig up an old IDE CDROM drive and you'll be fine I think!

Edit: Vmotion is only possible with at least two ESX hosts and shared storage (amongst other things!). VT has nothing to do with that. Vmotion is not within your grasp right now I think. The cheapest solution I have seen enabling vmotion is having three boxes, two with ESX and one having an NFS or iSCSI software solution... Much different (and more complicated) from your setup.

Dave and Erik,

Thanks a lot guys. The IDE Hard drive and CDRom did the trick. I finally got VMWare esx 3.5 installed. Yet to have it tested though, once done, would recommend as a potential whitebox on the cheap, well relatively.

I guess you got to manage the server from another pc, or am I expected to have a gui once it boots up?

OK, That is great. will use my laptop for that. So I guess I would need another box to try out vmotion, and external storage (iscsi). Well let me start with this first. Once again thanks

> Hi Erik,

> 

> I read from your online posting about your experience of running VMware ESX on the Shuttle SX38P2 Pro. Your posting was most informative and helpful - and would like to thank you for posting up your experience online to share with the community.

> 

> I am very keen to have a similar setup and am currently in the phase of gathering more information - would it be possible to ask you for

> some of your opinions and experience with the setup?

> 

> I'm looking to having the VMware ESX running on the Shuttle SX38P2 Pro on SATA harddisks and would most probably be considering a HP NC360T PCIe dual-port card instead of your Quad-port card in order to reduce costs. Processor would likely be an Intel Core2Quad processor with a nvidia graphics card, likely to follow your specs since those are proven to work.

> 

> The main considerations I have at this moment is the compatibility of VMware ESX for the following:

> - SATA harddisks (hardware compatibility doc doesn't mention the ICH9R chipset)

> - network adapter (you mentioned the onboard nic isn't recognised?)

> 

> Is there any difference between using the ESX and ESX(i) versions?

> 

> Any information you care to share is greatly appreciated!

> Thank you also for your time on this as well!

>

> Regards,

> dennis

Hiya Dennis,

ICH9R SATA Controller

You cannot use the RAID/AHCI feature of the ICH9R chipset to use the SATA drives in the SX38P2 Pro. You need to configure the BIOS as SATA Mode for IDE with Legacy support. The storage is not the fastest in this case, but it works good enough for a few VM (~9) running on ESXi 3.5. I have not been able yet to get ESX 3.5 to recognize the ICH9 Sata controller during the initial install (need to modify the pci config files etc...) and since I got  ESXi 3.5 running, I stopped testing for now.

Network

The Marvel network card (88E8056) that is on the motherboard of the Shuttle SX38P2 Pro is not recognized. I knew that from the onset of my project. So I got the HP nc364t Quad Gigabit card and an HP nc360t Dual Gigabit card on my 2nd SX38P2 Pro. This allows me create a vSwitch with two uplinks for the Service Console, Vmotion and Virtual Machines, and keep on a separate vSwitch the iSCSI traffic.

The biggest challenge and bet, was to see if the motherboard, would recognize the PCIe 8x NIC in the PCIe 16x connector.

I took a Nvidia 8500GT Silent card, as I wanted a low-powered graphic card that could output a Dual-DVI link signal to drive my 30" monitor (2560x1600). You also need to make sure you have a 'thin' graphical card that does not take two slot spaces, otherwise you cannot plug-in you're nc360t.

The main difference between the ESXi (installable) and the ESX, is the service console. The ESXi doesn't have one, so I can't create scripts etc... but on another side, the ESXi doesn't require as much patching as the ESX.

CPU

I select the Xeon 3350 because I just could not get my hands on a Intel Q9450. The distributors in my area are out of stock for the last 3 months, and so the prices are way up. The Q9450 is nearly the double of the Xeon 3350.

BIOS

I have also select in the BIOS to stop the boot process on error setting : All erors, but Keyboard. So now Ican have the SX38Pro P2 as a ESXi appliance without keyboard & mouse. It's all managed from the VirtualCenter.

DPM

Thanks to the two HP nc364T and HP nc360T network cards, my system are now compliante with the Distributed Power Management. I can therefore poweroff half of my HA/DRS cluster and restart it when I need more performance.

I'm going to post this info also online on the forum, as I got a few request for infomation from other people as well. I hope that doesn't bother you.

Take care,

Erik

Message was edited by: Erik Bussink

More info on ICH9R settings, NIC, DPM

I like the shuttle barebones too...I run a openfiler iSCSI server

on one and and an ESXi VM server (and 10 VMs) on another.

The E8400 $160 processor is the cheapest one that supports 64bit guests.

Shuttle K45 ($99) + E8400 ($160) + 1 1TB seagate SATA ($99)

+ 4GB DDR2 RAM ($32). integrated video and GigE = $392

Low power and low noise. I had a terrible experience with IDE

primary (too slow for words) and replaced with a SATA primary

and speed seems good. Despite that I thought the docs say

no VMs stored on the primary drive VMs on primary works fine.

Note that the E8400 is a 1333MHz FSB and requires the latest

K45 BIOS from Shuttle. Flash under MS-DOS only (not windows).

OpenFiler is not kidding: no shared storage on boot drive

The K48 cannot be used as it has no slots therefore no (VMware) enet.

Extra $120 gets the Shuttle SG31G2S that has 2 slots 1 PCI 1PCIe

and holds 4GB RAM and has the fancy "ICE Genie" cooler...

Of course you need an Intel gigE PCI card for $24 since as noted

the on-board Marvel is not supported (works great under OpenFiler though)

In regards to the Shuttle X38 mentioned versus the X48,

I opted for the X48 chipset because of the 2 PCIe 2.0 slots and 8GB

DDR3 support. I also got the quad intel PT PCIe NIC.

Maybe the X48 was a mistake ($100 more plus DDR3 is 2X $ DDR2).

NOTE Quad Ethernet boards are only supported under the oldest version

of the BIOS.

Could not wait for the X58 chipset with QPI (Q4 08). Also could not wait for

the seagate 1.5TB drives (oct) since $135/1TB (pcconnection)

was too good of a deal.

Status under ESXi update 3

Shuttle X48 works...use oldest BIOS if using Quad intel cards

Shuttle K45 works, use latest BIOS is using E8200/E8400 w/ 1333MHz FSB

Message was edited by: lukasware