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7 Replies Last post: Jan 30, 2009 1:03 PM by alkfung
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HP BL495c G5 blade with ESX 3.5 U2 - Memory and NIC Issues - Memory Resolved

Nov 5, 2008 2:36 PM

Click to view alkfung's profile Novice alkfung 9 posts since
Jan 17, 2008

Sooo, a virtualization blade that is not officially supported on the HCL for VMWare....

It's a great blade, but two things:

1) The drivers do not recognize the 10G NIC, which is a Broadcom Netextreme II, Model NC532i. I had to use an NC373 mezzanine.

2) Memory (this was the killer). After installing, it would throw up a code that it could not initialize the VMKernel on bootup. Memory related issue. Here are the tested methods I had to actually get it to initialize properly.

a. 8 x 4GB Memory modules populating the right banks. AND 2 x 2GB memory modules on the first two slots on the left bank.

b. 8 x 8GB Memory modules populating the right banks. AND 2 x 2GB memory modules on the first two slots on the left bank.

If anyone can figure out the NIC issue, please let me know! :)


Reply Re: HP BL495c G5 blade with ESX 3.5 U2 - Memory and NIC Issues - Memory Resolved Nov 6, 2008 7:19 AM
Click to view Texiwill's profile Guru Texiwill 9,498 posts since
Jan 13, 2004
Moderator
Hello,

1) The drivers do not recognize the 10G NIC, which is a Broadcom Netextreme II, Model NC532i. I had to use an NC373 mezzanine.

If the NIC is not on the HCL, it will not have a driver.

2) Memory (this was the killer). After installing, it would throw up a code that it could not initialize the VMKernel on bootup. Memory related issue. Here are the tested methods I had to actually get it to initialize properly.

a. 8 x 4GB Memory modules populating the right banks. AND 2 x 2GB memory modules on the first two slots on the left bank.

b. 8 x 8GB Memory modules populating the right banks. AND 2 x 2GB memory modules on the first two slots on the left bank.


Interesting.


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.
SearchVMware Blog: http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/virtualization-pro/
Blue Gears Blogs - http://www.itworld.com/ and http://www.networkworld.com/community/haletky
As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization
Reply Re: HP BL495c G5 blade with ESX 3.5 U2 - Memory and NIC Issues - Memory Resolved Nov 14, 2008 8:16 AM
Click to view rfk1O21's profile Lurker rfk1O21 1 posts since
Nov 14, 2008

VMware ESX Server 3.5 Update 3 supports the HP BL495.

HP BL495c support - This release adds support for the HP Blade Server BL495c with all Virtual Connect and IO Options allowing 1 or 10Gb connection to the network (upstream) and 1Gb connections only to the servers (downstream).
http://www.vmware.com/support/vi3/doc/vi3_esx35u3_rel_notes.html


Reply Re: HP BL495c G5 blade with ESX 3.5 U2 - Memory and NIC Issues - Memory Resolved Dec 9, 2008 1:23 PM
Click to view ncarde's profile Enthusiast ncarde 87 posts since
Mar 10, 2007

I heard that the 490/495 removed Hardware RAID capability for local disk (in order to make room in a 1/2 height blade for more memory (dimms) capability).

Non-issue if you run 3i with custom monitoring and no guest Backup presence I guess but seems pretty silly to put RAID overhead on Software, no?

Reply Re: HP BL495c G5 blade with ESX 3.5 U2 - Memory and NIC Issues - Memory Resolved Jan 15, 2009 8:07 PM
in response to: ncarde
Click to view alkfung's profile Novice alkfung 9 posts since
Jan 17, 2008
Not sure why they removed the RAID, but if you use it for ESX it shouldn't be a problem if you have your cluster built correctly. If one of the blades SSD fails, the others in the cluster should be able to pick up the slack.
Reply Re: HP BL495c G5 blade with ESX 3.5 U2 - Memory and NIC Issues - Memory Resolved Jan 29, 2009 9:20 AM
Click to view ocean27's profile Lurker ocean27 2 posts since
Jul 10, 2007

hi i installed vmware esx 3.5 up2 on hp bl495c g5 , how can i configure Mezzanine nics .

I am unable to connect to service console .Any help will be appreciated

Reply Re: HP BL495c G5 blade with ESX 3.5 U2 - Jan 29, 2009 9:36 AM
Click to view ocean27's profile Lurker ocean27 2 posts since
Jul 10, 2007

anybody installed esx 3.5 update 2 on BL495c g5 wihout any network issues please lete me know .

i have issues with nics on the server , even my network guys tell me that port is open i cannot ping to any server or even the gateway .


Reply Re: HP BL495c G5 blade with ESX 3.5 U2 - Jan 30, 2009 1:03 PM
in response to: ocean27
Click to view alkfung's profile Novice alkfung 9 posts since
Jan 17, 2008

You're going to have to be more specific with the Mezzanine cards. You may have to install using the U3 or at least upgade it to U3, see here: http://vmware.com/download/vi/


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