ESX 4 Install power cycling

[Rhidian]

Hi,

I have an issue installing ESX 4 in both GUI and text mode, basically it gets so far and then power cycles. I belive all the hardware is supported as per the HCL but would unsupported hardwear cause the issue as described?

[marcelo_soares]

Either unsupported or deffective. Can you provithe the harware specification and the ESX version you are trying to install?

Marcelo Soares

VMWare Certified Professional 310/410

Virtualization Tech Master

Globant Argentina

Consider awarding points for "helpful" and/or "correct" answers.

[Rhidian]

Specs as follows:

Motherboard: SPCIE-5100DX

Bios: AMI

Processor: 2 x Intel Xeon L5410 @ 2.33 GHz

Memory: 32GB 4 X 8GB Kingston

Network: 82574L Gigabit Network Connection x 2

82571EB Gigabit Network Connection x 4

RAID: 80801 SATA RAID Controller

Disks: 4 x Momentus XT Solid State Hybrid Drives

[jcwuerfl]

Sounds like a hardware issue either way to me. Perhaps take out any PCI cards if there are any during the install, or could also be a bad memory module? to check that you could run memory diagnostics on it. You may also want to verify the DVD your installing it from to make sure you didn't get a corrupted install disk from a corrupted download.

[MartinAmaro]

you might want to post the error you are getting right before it cycles.

[Rhidian]

No error it appears to be installing as normal gets past selecting either a GUI or text install it does some initialisation stuff and then dies.

[Rhidian]

I have re-dowloaded and burnt the media same issue interestingly if I break the RAID the install gets a little further.

[jcwuerfl]

do you have a non-ssd drive? i wonder if you could try that.

[Rhidian]

Just tried same issue, any more ideas?

[jcwuerfl]

Memory issue? could you try and run a memory diagnostic?

[Rhidian]

Already fully tested, I think the issue is the RAID controller an Intel ICH9R.

[Rhidian]

I have modified the installation to have only one disk but I still get the same issue, would this point to somthig other than the controller or would a single disk be presented in the same way as RAID?

[Rhidian]

After adding an Adaptec 3405 that is supported as per the HCL I get the same issues, I have now checked each component and they are supported, why is this issue still occurring?

[Rhidian]

Anyone??

[jcwuerfl]

Sorry, wish I could be more help. Is this a HP, Dell, or IBM? If so, you may want to put in a call with them to see if there is anything else they can suggest? I have also seen a weird case with IBM systems with the second network daughter card that is on the x3650 m2 causing an NMI where that causes it to reboot unexpectedly and they had a workaround for that by installing some additional clips to secure it.

[Rhidian]

Memory issue, of unknown origin basically if I remove 16GB the system works as normal I have tested this using all the DIMMS and different slots so it isn't a faulty module or motherboard and the card supports a maximum of 32GB, there are no BIOS upgrades available. Interestingly the BIOS doesn't have any settings related to virtualization.

Does anyone know what the installation routine is doing in relation to RAM tests etc??

[jcwuerfl]

Nice! at least we know its something with memory.

The install isn't doing anything but reading/writing to memory so it was hitting a spot in memory that the hardware didn't like and it rebooted. There are a bunch of utilities out there to do memory testing so you may want to do that. Something like this perhaps: http://www.memtest.org/#downiso