ESXi on Asus m3n78-vm

[kwinsor]

Hello,

I'm booting ESXi from USB and cannot see the local storage on my PC. The motherboard model is in the subject. I've obtained the PCI ID's and as far as I can tell the SATA controller is a MCP78. I replaced the oem.tgz file with the one from which adds support for nVidia MCP78 SATA controller in ACHI mode (10de:0ad4). I still cannot see local storage and I am running in ACHI mode.

Am I missing something? I really don't want to go with Hyper-V.

Thanks

Kent

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Hi Kent, could you post the output from lspci -p and fdisk - l?

[kwinsor]

Hi Dave,

Output from fdisk -l:

Disk /dev/disks/vmhba32:0:0:0: 1998 MB, 1998631936 bytes

64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 1906 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/disks/vmhba32:0:0:1 5 750 763904 5 Extended

/dev/disks/vmhba32:0:0:4 * 1 4 4080 4 FAT16 <32M

/dev/disks/vmhba32:0:0:5 5 52 49136 6 FAT16

/dev/disks/vmhba32:0:0:6 53 100 49136 6 FAT16

/dev/disks/vmhba32:0:0:7 101 210 112624 fc VMKcore

/dev/disks/vmhba32:0:0:8 211 750 552944 6 FAT16

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Output from lspci -p:

Bus:Sl.F Vend:Dvid Subv:Subd ISA/irq/Vec P M Module Name

Spawned bus

00:00.00 10de:0754 1043:82f2 V

00:01.00 10de:075c 1043:82f2 V

00:01.01 10de:0752 1043:82f2 11/ / A V

00:01.02 10de:0751 1043:82f2 V

00:01.03 10de:0753 1043:82f2 10/ 10/0x71 B V

00:01.04 10de:0568 1043:82f2 V

00:02.00 10de:077b 1043:82f2 10/ 10/0x71 A V usb-ohci

00:02.01 10de:077c 1043:82f2 15/ 15/0x71 B V ehci-hcd

00:04.00 10de:077d 1043:82f2 11/ 11/0x71 A V usb-ohci

00:04.01 10de:077e 1043:82f2 10/ 10/0x71 B V ehci-hcd

00:06.00 10de:0759 1043:82f2 255/ / @ V

00:07.00 10de:0774 1043:829f 15/ 15/0x71 A V

00:08.00 10de:075a 0000:0000 001 V

00:09.00 10de:0ad0 1043:82f2 5/ 5/0x71 A V

00:11.00 10de:0569 0000:0000 002 V

00:16.00 10de:0778 0000:0000 10/ 10/0x79 A V

00:18.00 10de:075b 0000:0000 11/ 11/0x79 A V

00:24.00 1022:1200 0000:0000 V

00:24.01 1022:1201 0000:0000 V

00:24.02 1022:1202 0000:0000 V

00:24.03 1022:1203 0000:0000 V

00:24.04 1022:1204 0000:0000 V

01:06.00 8086:107c 8086:1376 10/ 10/0x79 A V e1000 vmnic0

02:00.00 10de:0849 1043:82f2 15/ / A V

Thanks,

Kent

[Dave_Mishchenko]

It doesn't appear that the driver was loaded for the controller (00:09.00 10de:0ad0 1043:82f2 5/ 5/0x71 A V ). You can manually try to load the driver with the command vmkload_mod /mod/<driver_name.o>. If it works then lspci -p should show the module loaded for that device and should assign a vmhbaX identifier to the device. On the customizing oem.tgz there's also a specific download for the 0ad0 device.

Adds support for nVidia MCP78 SATA controller (10de:0759 / 10de:0ad0)

[kwinsor]

Hi Dave,

I actually made a mistake and thought I had set AHCI mode in the BIOS. I turned it on and now I can see the drives. My new problem however is that I cannot format as VMFS the smaller of the two drives (80 GB). I have formatted the 500 GB drive successfully. The controller and path in question is vmhba0:0:0. The error is "Failed to Update Disk Partition Information".

I did have Windows 2008 installed on that disk previously. I have used disks before with ESX that had windows on them with no issue. I event booted off the Windows 2008 DVD and removed the partition in had created and still no go.

Output from fdisk -l below. Do you have any ideas?

fdisk -l

Disk /dev/disks/vmhba0:0:0:0: 80.0 GB, 80000000000 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9726 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/disks/vmhba0:0:0:1 1 9726 78124031 fb VMFS

Disk /dev/disks/vmhba34:0:0:0: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/disks/vmhba34:0:0:1 1 60801 488383968+ fb VMFS

Disk /dev/disks/vmhba32:0:0:0: 1998 MB, 1998631936 bytes

64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 1906 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/disks/vmhba32:0:0:1 5 750 763904 5 Extended

/dev/disks/vmhba32:0:0:4 * 1 4 4080 4 FAT16 &lt;32M

/dev/disks/vmhba32:0:0:5 5 52 49136 6 FAT16

/dev/disks/vmhba32:0:0:6 53 100 49136 6 FAT16

/dev/disks/vmhba32:0:0:7 101 210 112624 fc VMKcore

/dev/disks/vmhba32:0:0:8 211 750 552944 6 FAT16

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Thanks,

Kent

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Give this a try - http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/ESXi_35_common_issues.php#16

[kwinsor]

Hi Dave,

Yes.....I tried that earlier with no luck. Then I booted the server off a Linux Mint installation CD and used gparted to remove the unknown partition. I tried again in ESXi and it still failed. I booted again using Linux Mint Live CD and removed the unknown partition but this time created a ext3 volume. For some reason it worked and ESXi created the VMFS volume after I rebooted.......very strange that ESXi needed a Linux file system first. When I first discovered the issue last night there would have been a NTFS partition on the disk but ESXi did not like that format either.

Anyway, thanks for the tips. It all looks fine now.

Kent