ESXi 3.5u3 on an IBM eServer 326m

[bernp]

Hello,

I'm trying to run ESXi 3.5u3 (130755) on an IBM eServer 326m (bi-opteron 275 dual core, 8Gb, 2x160Gb SATA).

The installation is OK, all hardware is recognized and I can access and managed with the remote CLI, but it always crashed after few tens of minutes... (without any VM inside yet, the VMkernel is alone...).

Does anybody tried this config ?

Thanks

[Jaracz]

Hi!

This issue exists also in ESX 4.0 (Update1). Unfortunately only updating BIOS and BMC, disabling ipmi and/or deleting ipmi modules doesn't help in this case (or not much). After 20-30 minutes comes Purple Screen or "PCPU x didn't have a heartbeat for xxx seconds", and no ping reply. Just the same as in ESX 3.5. I've been working to find a solution last 3 days, and I think I've got it.

The solution is to turn off ACPI, by adding "acpi=off" to the kernel option in GRUB. The server is since 4 days up now without any problems so far.. Maybe this solution could be helpful for someone and save him much time, so I'm publising it. I couldn't find any help to this problem in internet..

Best Regards,

Jaracz

[stangri]

Is the issue still present on the ESXi 4.1? I've got an eServer 326m which I'd like to use to run ESXi on it, but I'd rather stay away from ESXi if it's not fully compatible.

[DSTAVERT]

I would see if it is on the HCL http://vmware.com/go/hcl if you are woried about the server especially if you are considering 4.1 It is an older device and may have other issues moving beyond 3.5.

[stangri]

The solution is to turn off ACPI, by adding "acpi=off" to the kernel option in GRUB.

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How can I do that?

[stangri]

So yeah, couldn't even get to the 4.1 installer, but 4.0 installed almost without an issue. Almost -- because out of the two SCSI drives ESXi can only see just one.

I've had the FreeBSD installed on my first drive (da0), I've made a complete copy of it onto a second drive (da1) just in case -- and it wasn't in vain as the ESXi only offered one disk to be installed on (da0) and I was hoping to boot it up and quickly add a FreeBSD VM with the second disk (da1) in the direct access mode (and then transfer services into either a newer FreeBSD or CentOS one by one). However when I go into "Devices" within ESXi it doesn't even list the second drive.

I'm assuming all 326m are equal with the same SCSI controller, right? Anyone else had a problem of ESXi only seeing just one disk? Is it possible to resolve that?

My previous question still stands -- how can I turn ACPI off for ESXi permanently? Is there a file I need to edit? Please help.

PS. I can still boot into FreeBSD if I select second disk as a startup drive in BIOS, so yeah, it's there and it's still got FreeBSD on it.