having a strange 256mb 2nd device on esxi boot sd-card: what is this?

[Earl3000]

hello!

i have installed esxi 6.0 U3 on sd-card on hp proliant ml310e gen8 (scratch parttion is located on a own datastore). everything is working fiine. yesterday i checked the storage devices in vsphere client and i saw, that there is a 2nd device located on the sd-card. please see the screenshot. it is 256 mb, win95 fat32 LBA. i have a 2nd server also with sd-card installation and this server does not have this device showing up.

i am confused what this device is. it seems to be part of the esxi installation (when i try to delete the paartitions in vcenter, it says "cannot change host configuration"..

i installed esxi on the sd-card with the parameter "runweazel formatwithmbr, maybe this had an impact onthis. but i used this parameter for the installation on both servers,and as already said, the other server does not have this device.

maybe the sd-card was not empty when i installed, i dont know.

can soemone please tell me,what this is.

if i want to get rid of it, i guess that i have to install esxi from scratch. i am a beginner and i dont want to loose my config. so can you please confirm these steps:

- backung up esxi config: putty ssh to host --> /bin/firmwareConfig.sh --backup /tmp/ --> copying the config bundle to desktop

- deleting the host in vcenter

- putting esxi host in maintenance mode and shut down

- put in new sd card

- booting serve rfrom installation disk

- installing esxi new

- configuring the basic settings (ip adress, vlan, dns, root user)

- adding esxi host to vcente ragain

- using the update manager in vcenter to briin the host tothe same build as before

- applying the backup config: copying backup config to /tmp with winscp

- ssh to host with putty (allow ssh connect to host in vsphere client first of course) and run: /bin/firmwareConfig.sh --restore /tmp/configBundle.tgz

- reboot

- everything restored and I am happy

as i already said, i an quite new to esxi and hope you guys can help,

thank you so much,

regards,

flo

[Earl3000]

and one additional question:

i initially installed esxi with the hpe custom image VMware-ESXi-6.0.0-Update3-5050593-HPE-600.9.7.0.17-Feb2017.iso . later, i updated esxi with VMware-ESXi-6.0.0-Update3-6765062-HPE-600.10.1.5.19-Oct2017.iso . then, i did patches with vcenter update manager from time to time (only the default baselines, critical and non critical). so taday it shows build 9239799 .

question: do i have to use the VMware-ESXi-6.0.0-Update3-6765062-HPE-600.10.1.5.19-Oct2017.iso for my new installation and then update via update manager to get to build 9239799 or can i use this image: VMware-ESXi-6.0.0-Update3-7967664-HPE-preGen9-600.9.8.0.7-Jun2018.iso (last pre gen9 custom inage) from here:

Download VMware vSphere

[Earl3000]

and a 2nd additinal question (as i have forgotten):

shall i just diskpart /clean the sd-card  (so i have just unallocated space on the sd card)  before esxi installation or shall i diskpart /clean, create partition primary, active, format fs=fat 32 quick?

maybe this was my mistake the first time: that i created a partiton on the sd card that remained alongside with the esxi installation.

[DSISE]

Hi all,

After several days of research i found this information that's solve our issue :

https://community.hpe.com/t5/proliant-servers-ml-dl-sl/how-to-remove-vid-drive-in-dl560-gen10/td-p/7...

In case the link doesn't work :

1. Update ILO firmware to latest.

2. Disable VID (Intelligent Provisioning->BIOS/Platform Configuration(RBSU)->USB options->Virtual Install Disk-Disable)