ESXi on HP ProDesk 400 G5 MT

[VTolly]

Hello to Everybody!

It's a relatively new Core i5-8500 box. Is there any way to make it work with ESXi?

Tried to install ESXi v5.5 (HP edition) - during the very first boot it loaded all the drivers

started with devices initialization and failed to find the network driver only. While looking for the nic driver

I rebooted the box and all subsequent boots failed with the latest seen "Relocating modules and starting up the kernel..."

message just after loading all the drivers.

ESXi v6.5(regular) - All runs failed with latest seen "Relocating modules and starting up the kernel..." message.

Tried SHIFT-O -> "ignoreHeadless=TRUE" option on boot.

And there's no option in HP BIOS to disable headless mode.

Updated the BIOS to the latest version. No visible improvements.

Tried to boot with external video adapter.

UEFI is disabled in BIOS. Only legacy mode is used. Also tried to disable VT-X.

The same "Relocating modules ..." issue.

Any thoughts or maybe VMware already issued a patch for this architecture and I failed to notice it?

P.S.

I'd like to emphasize that the problem I have is not related (from my point of view) to network adapter

as I know how to cope with it but with the step that ESXi does after it depicts the message

"Relocating modules and starting up the kernel..."

All ESXi variants I tried just freeze at this point (at least it looks like it).

I already tried Proxmox and it works OK on this hardware.

Thank you in advance for any help.

[RickVerstegen · Accepted solution]

It is not on the VMware compatibility list, so it is not supported. May it work? Maybe, but this is not guaranteed.

What is the model/vendor of the network card? Anther option would be to install VMWare Workstation on it and do nested ESXi, mostly used if you want to play with ESXi or a test lab.

[MikeStoica]

Since it's not on the compatibility list, you can't use an HP custom image.

Use the ESXi ISO from VMware.

[SupreetK]

Now that you had considerable progress with ESXi 5.5, check the link ESXI 6.0 INSTALLER DOES NOT DETECT NETWORK ADAPTER – The HomeWork and see if you can inject the network driver.

Cheers,

Supreet

[Dave_the_Wave]

HPE builds of ESXi are only for ProLiant servers, nothing else, and definitely not HP desktops.

The only thing related between ProLiant and desktops is their stock ticker symbol. Other than that, they are two wholly different species.

You will have better luck installing a regular vanilla build of ESXi, the same what every other whitebox server must use, and play the game with the Physical Adapter compatibility list.