Cannot boot vSphere ESXi 5.0/5.1 server from HDD

[iliavin]

Hi,

I just installed a new ESXi server (2 cores CPU, 2x1 TBytes disks). The installation was done in the version 5.0 (because I needed to convert previously existing VMware Server 2.0 machines) and than upgraded to the version 5.1.

Neither in 5.0 nor in 5.1 the server cannot boot from HDD ("Please insert bootable device..." after about half a minute). I need to boot from CD and than to select "Boot from local disk" option.

I hope there is an option to configure boot from HDD normally. Any suggestions haow to do this in vSphere ESXi 5.1 server?

Thanks in advance,

Ilia

[vmroyale]

Is your server on the VMware HCL?

[iliavin]

It's not a brand machine. We used this PC for 2-3 years to serve as VMware Server 2.0 host with a dozen of VMs used to debug our server installation on different platforms (different versions of Linux and Windows). Last time it turned to be unstable and we decided to port all this stuff to vSphere ESXi because recently we purchased a license for vSphere ESXi.

Installation succeeded, all VMs have been ported to it. That only problem is that it needs the installation CD to be withing DVD drive and operator must be near the machine during boot process.

[continuum]

try to re-install using “formatwithmbr”
see
http://wp.secretnest.info/?p=697

[iliavin]

Re-installation was not an acceptable option because all VMs already have been cloned to the new machine.

But I found that when I enabled the UEFI boot in BIOS settings it solved the problem and now this machine can boot normally from the disk.

THanks for your assistance,

Ilia

[continuum]

> Re-installation was not an acceptable option because all VMs already have been cloned to the new machine.

That would have been no problem