BL465c G5 - ESXi 5.1 U2

[sgunelius]

Good evening.  I've got an older cluster of HP ProLiant BL465c G5 hosts that are running ESXi 5.0, but they don't seem to be very stable on the 1311175 build (PSOD related to E1000E RSS and VC disconnects), so we were planning to rebuild with a later release.  I noticed that the VMware Compatibility Guide lists ESXi 5.1 U2 as the latest supported version for the G5, but HP's compatibility matrix only lists up to 5.0 U3.  I contacted HP and as usual they don't deviate from what is documented and I suspect they just haven't gone to the trouble of testing any 5.1 release.  Is anyone out there running 5.1 U2 on the G5 and if so, are there any known issues?  Thank you.

Scott

[dainok]

I'm running 5.5U1 on G2 (for tests only) and it works (slowly) fine. The question is: can you run your application on an unsupported system? That means if something goes wrong (data loss, crashes...) you cannot blame VMware or HP.

[sgunelius]

5.5 on unsupported hardware, you are riding the ragged edge.  Yeah, I know it all comes down to whether I'm abandoning my support should something go wrong, I was just surprised that VMware listed the G5 as compatible with 5.1 U2, while HP only listed 5.0, usually VMware and large hardware vendors are in lock-step when it comes to compatibility.  Because we use VMware support through HP, I'll probably have to argue the point if anything goes south with the hypervisor on those G5s.  This is only a stop-gap measure until we can get some new hosts to replace the G5s.  Thanks for the response.