Here's my current configuration;SuperMicro - X7DVL-E (2 x socket 771 64bit Xeon (quad or dual)MB) FSB speed of 1333Mhz/1067 Mhz / 667Mhz - ATX form factor - ACPI - 6 x onboard SATA ports (supports RAID 0,1,5,10) - 2 x Gbit Lan ports-supported by ESB2 south bridge (works 1st time under ESXi!) - 1 x EIDE UltraDMA / 100 bus master I/F. - 1 x floppy (I'm not using this.) - 6 x USB - not using headers, just 2 x onboard on back of system board. - ATI 16MB ES1000 Graphics Controller - Super I/O: Winbond W83627HF - loaded w/ 1 x Dual-Xeon 2GHz cpu in socket location #0 - 2 GB (2 x 1GB) RAM ECC registered memory. - EIDE DVD - Bios - 8Mb Phoenix w/ DMI 2.3, ACPI 1.0, PnP, USB kb support, HW Bios virus protection and SMBios 2.3 - I've been puzzled by this motherboards refusal to work correctly for SATA control for some time now and I'm about at wits end. The motherboard has a Phoenix Bios (perhaps we should be tracking versions??) which does contain most of the same settings I've used successfully on other whiteboxes - i.e.: - Sata Controller Mode - Enhanced - Sata Raid Mode - Disabled - Sata AHCI Mode - Disabled And indeed, this motherboard worked fine the first time I loaded it up w/ a fresh Samsung 1TB hard drive - HD103UJ. However, I had formatted the drive correctly in another machine using Gparted ISO as ESX3. Once I did this, I transferred the drive over to the machine and then booted up ESXi 3.5. Machine came up fine and I was then able to connect to it successfully using the VMWare Infrastructure Client on my windows box. Next, it showed up as a new datastore and I was then able to format it correctly for my system. walaa, it's there. I then went to the ESXi box's console and did a proper F2 shutdown. I added 2 x more GB of ECC registered memory (borrowed from an exact clone of this system - yes, i have 2 systems w/ the same configs  And then restarted the machine. The machine now hangs during boot of the ESXi Server at this point. "Starting VMware ESX Server 3i: Loading module ata_piix ... Starting config Script" I then took the drive out of this system and loaded it into a completely different system - an E-machine w/ centron CPU 1.6ghz box running ESXi 3.5 as well. This e-machine recognized the HD and I was able to format it using this box. Then I tried to transfer the fully formatted VMSf drive back to the Supermicro box. the ESXi boot still hangs at the same place.???? Not sure what to try next. any help would be greatly welcome!!! |
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I haven't yet started to work on getting my drives mirrored as we're in a bit of design mode and this system is mostly used for getting several key apps up and running. We're building out a virtual office concept with it and for that I'm managing desktops of Windows 2008 & Mac's.
I had the system working along fine once I solved these initial issues for the SATA controller and enet's (yes both work now.) There is another key switch you might want to enable and that is in the Bios settings - I'm fuzzy on where exactly now because it's been quite a while but I think it's in the Bios settings under "General" settings (whatever that 1st screen is...)
In order for one to load up Windows 2008, it must run in 64bit mode and in order to get that working, you'll have to enable "virtual mode" on the processors.
My next move is to get the mirrored drives working for this system and then get my 2nd Supermicro MB X7DVL-E up and running. As you've no doubt started to find out... ESXi is sort a a teaser "free" app. Once you begin to get a network humming along, you'll really want to figure out what friend you can bug for a licensed version of the VI3 console as w/ that one, now you can do some cool stuff like Backup and vMotion - or at least that's my impression.
NOTE - "my impression" really means I may not know what I'm talking about as I haven't yet 1) built it, 2) broken it 3) fixed it again!
Thanks for tapping into this thread and sharing your insights. I appreciate everyone's response - pls keep the info coming.
As far as Xen and Hyper-V, I think you've got a valid point on both. It's very apparant that VMware and Microsoft are much better supported for now - at least. I've played around with only the initial versions of Xen and at the time, it was very painful to get it up and running (yes, just like ESXi.) I didn't like some of the things I saw in the management console for Xen. It didn't seem as feature-rich on mgt as the VMWare. Perhaps that has changed by now?? The main thing I struggled with on Xen was the % of people using it in production and not just labs...
The key thing that keeps me playing in the ESXi world are the following points:
1) Main stream - I think I saw references saying up to 73% of Datacenters are using VMware in production now.
2) Mature and feature rich on the Enterprise side - as long as somebody's got the funding. Templates, Permissions, multiple domains, zones, etc... I think Xen can still only do 1 or 2 (correct?)
3) ESXi is the stated goal for next generation Vmware stuff and it's only 32MB... very tiny.
So, when you put together all the above and you're a person who wants to be on the forefront of the technology curve, it stands to reason there will be quite a bit of plowing new green fields and your bound to hit rocks. It's knowing where to harvest the returns that makes the plowing worth while.
For me, I'm cutting my teeth on this stuff because there is value in being at least a very good "generalist" on something like ESXi (As well as XEN or Hyper-V, I suppose). I can see the benefits in having a very small device running the same stuff that also runs on the Enterprise. That's where I see some "bridging" opportunities such as home server connecting more easily to the cloud - and incidentally, where I'm spending a lot of my energy these days too
For me however, I really love all 3 for different reasons though but mainly because of the competition it's creating. Competition is very good for all of us. Makes the good stuff have to stay good and causes the immature stuff to leadfrog to get ahead. All good for you and me in the end. Net, net, I don't think you could go wrong w/ any of the 3 options. It's where you see the opportunity aligned with your ability to capture it.
As far as Xen and Hyper-V, I think you've got a valid point on both. It's very apparant that VMware and Microsoft are much better supported for now - at least. I've played around with only the initial versions of Xen and at the time, it was very painful to get it up and running (yes, just like ESXi.) I didn't like some of the things I saw in the management console for Xen. It didn't seem as feature-rich on mgt as the VMWare. Perhaps that has changed by now?? The main thing I struggled with on Xen was the % of people using it in production and not just labs...
The key thing that keeps me playing in the ESXi world are the following points:
1) Main stream - I think I saw references saying up to 73% of Datacenters are using VMware in production now.
2) Mature and feature rich on the Enterprise side - as long as somebody's got the funding. Templates, Permissions, multiple domains, zones, etc... I think Xen can still only do 1 or 2 (correct?)
3) ESXi is the stated goal for next generation Vmware stuff and it's only 32MB... very tiny.
So, when you put together all the above and you're a person who wants to be on the forefront of the technology curve, it stands to reason there will be quite a bit of plowing new green fields and your bound to hit rocks. It's knowing where to harvest the returns that makes the plowing worth while.
For me, I'm cutting my teeth on this stuff because there is value in being at least a very good "generalist" on something like ESXi (As well as XEN or Hyper-V, I suppose). I can see the benefits in having a very small device running the same stuff that also runs on the Enterprise. That's where I see some "bridging" opportunities such as home server connecting more easily to the cloud - and incidentally, where I'm spending a lot of my energy these days too
For me however, I really love all 3 for different reasons though but mainly because of the competition it's creating. Competition is very good for all of us. Makes the good stuff have to stay good and causes the immature stuff to leadfrog to get ahead. All good for you and me in the end. Net, net, I don't think you could go wrong w/ any of the 3 options. It's where you see the opportunity aligned with your ability to capture it.
FYI,
Based on my experience with VMware you don't automatically get Vmotion and the backup feature with the new virtual console, vCenter. VI3 is the full infrastructure suite and it includes the virtual console, Vmotion, HA (High Availability) and Backup features. Shortly after releasing the free ESXi hypervisor and the new virtual console replacement vCenter, VMware began to offer a more ala-cart approach to licensing features like Vmotion, HA and backup. Then depending on the version of VI3 your using, you may not get the latest version of the virtual console vCenter. Aren't licensing issues fun to figure out
(lol)
I would however, like to know the final BIOS configuration for your SATA drives if it's not too much trouble. I've already got VM support enabled within the BIOS, as this has become a fairly standard BIOS setting when implementing either VMware, ZEN or Hyper-V. If I can get ESXi working with these specific motherboards my current customer will be ecstatic because it will be able to recycle several test and development servers into production VM hosts. Allowing me to complete this virtualization project WELL below budget. So any additional help will be greatly appreciated.
HCronin
Based on my experience with VMware you don't automatically get Vmotion and the backup feature with the new virtual console, vCenter. VI3 is the full infrastructure suite and it includes the virtual console, Vmotion, HA (High Availability) and Backup features. Shortly after releasing the free ESXi hypervisor and the new virtual console replacement vCenter, VMware began to offer a more ala-cart approach to licensing features like Vmotion, HA and backup. Then depending on the version of VI3 your using, you may not get the latest version of the virtual console vCenter. Aren't licensing issues fun to figure out
I would however, like to know the final BIOS configuration for your SATA drives if it's not too much trouble. I've already got VM support enabled within the BIOS, as this has become a fairly standard BIOS setting when implementing either VMware, ZEN or Hyper-V. If I can get ESXi working with these specific motherboards my current customer will be ecstatic because it will be able to recycle several test and development servers into production VM hosts. Allowing me to complete this virtualization project WELL below budget. So any additional help will be greatly appreciated.
HCronin
