Supermicro X9SBAA-F with a Atom S1260

[FiZi]

Has anyone tried getting ESXi 5.1 working on a Supermicro X9SBAA-F Atom S1260 using an internal SATA drive for storage?

[Tomas_D]

Nope. The keyboard doesn't work during the installation.

[ndemarco]

The Supermicro X9SBAA-O motherboard uses a Renesas uPD720201 USB host controller. VMWare ESXi 5.5 goes through the installation routine, then loses the keyboard.

A semi-scientific changing of BIOS options has not proven successful.

This thread talks about UEFI boot issues.

Another thread talks about USB 3.0 and XHCI. Specifically it mentions some install-time VMWare options one can set to enable the XHCI handoff. Setting these is beyond my current knowledge.

Currently, the X9SBAA-O is not functional for VMWare ESXi 5.5 because the keyboard becomes unresponsive after the ESXi installer progress bar completes. With an unresponsive keyboard, answering the prompt "Press <Enter> to continue" is impossible. A workaround will be helpful. With the X9SBAA-O's low total dissipated power and 8 GB ECC RAM limit, the combination could be useful for small scale virtualization.

Solving this will take someone with advanced VMWare and USB 3.0 xHCI knowledge.

[GregorE]

I got this board for a long time now, but have not put it to good use yet because of the lack of support for chipsets etc.

I tested ESXi 5.5 on the SuperMicro x9sbaa-f.

I added a NEC based USB2.0 PCI card to the system. By doing so, I could go forward with the installation process.

It did not recognized my SATA disks. Although I formatted it to different file formats ext3, ext4, blank etc, it did not find any disk.

However it did recognize my 8GB USB stick I also put in the USB2.0 PCI card. I selected it as target for installation and it finished completely.

The sad thing about this is that the system can not boot from a usb stick located on an PCI card.

At this point it's not the USB3.0 problem, rather the SATA controller that is not supported yet.. Hopefully someone can explain how to

add drivers to the original ESXi installation medium. (If that's possible) Please keep this threat alive if you got any other solutions.

[ndemarco]

I had to send my X9SBAA motherboard back to SuperMicro, so no playing for a week or two.

This link is an ESXi customizer used to add packages into ESXi. The author has done a bang on job of explaining how the process works. I used the customizer to add an obscure Intel network chip set driver to ESX5.5. The process went smoothly.

Is the SATA chip set driver available for ESXi yet?

One more thing: You can install using the remote desktop capabilities of IPMI within the motherboard. This way, you bypass the keyboard issue. Granted, proper drivers solve these issues

[GregorE]

Any news on support yet? Or did anyone already successfully run ESXi 5.X+ on this board?

Would love to run a VM of windows 2012R2 on it. Native it keeps blue-screening..!

Did not try this workaround yet: http://www.v-front.de/2013/11/how-to-make-your-unsupported-sata-ahci.html

Have a good weekend!

[FactorVIII]

I got it working. Read this link..

http://www.v-front.de/2013/11/how-to-make-your-unsupported-sata-ahci.html

Essentially you have to download an esxi ISO customizer which you then insert these vibs files, then rebuild the ISO and it will work.

Our marvel SATA chipset is supported in the latest version this guy released. (8-13-2014 as of writing this)

As far as getting the keyboard to work, I had to buy an add in PCI USB 2.0 card. The one I bought was from sabrent and cost about $9

[GregorE]

Also got ESXi running now on the atom. Was not hard at all!

Although there is a new "problem". Using the PCI USB card I can make changes on the host it self.

By adding a NIC in the PCI slot, there is no way to assign the new NIC to the ESXi host, because there is no keyboard control.

IPMI does not respond to any virtual keyboard inputs. Had this problem with other Operating Systems as wel.

Virtual keyboard only works if the OS has USB3.0 support. Do I need to update bios or ipmi firmware?

Or is there a way to ssh in to the ESXi host and assign de new NIC via the command-line.

Thanks!

[FactorVIII]

I thought you could assign the NIC to the host through vsphere, although I might be wrong. I acutally ended up getting another board because the atom wasn't quite powerful enough for what I needed.

Good luck!

[GregorE]

When adding a new physical NIC, usually you would have to assign the NIC to the host via the black&yellow ESXi shell.

But I might have found a workaround. Could be useful for other people with the same board/problem, or just general information.

Simply put: Via the ESXi shell (ssh) type DCUI. That way you can add the a physical nic to the host.