ESXi Installation Issues

[CMireur]

I have a Gigabyte S-Series mother board and an AMD Athlon II CPU. The system has SATA disks. I understand that although the Athlon is not supported on VMware, it does work. If that's not correct, please correct me. Based on that being correct, I tried to install ESXi 4 and received the folloing errors and could not proceed:

Failed to load tpm
Failed to load lvmdriver

After that, I tried to install ESXi 3.5 U4 and received the following error message:

Fatal Error
Unable to find a supported device to write the image to
Manf: Gigabyte Technologies
Model: GA-MA74GM-S2
Service Tag: aborted
BIOS Rev: FB

I also heard I could install ESXi under VMware Workstation (6.5.3), but it appears that Workstation does not support SATA drives.

Some of my research indicates that the ESXi installation failure may be related to the NIC. I am unemployed and don't have the funds to buy parts hoping for success.

I would appreciate any suggestions anyone might have.

Thanks,

Charles Mireur

[weinstein5]

Welcome to the forums - a good resource for getting ESX/ESXi to install on non-supported hardware is http://vm-help.com/ operated by one of the Forum moderators -

If you do not have it already check out the white paper from xtravrt.com - http://xtravirt.com/search/node/xs10003

If you find this or any other answer useful please consider awarding points by marking the answer correct or helpful

[prakashraj]

Hi,

If your processor supports VT then you can install ESXi under Workstation 6.5 as VM

ESXi Installation guide available in http://xtravirt.com/xd10072

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1365943#1365943

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Prakash

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Hello Charles, the tpm error can be ignored, but the lvm error indicates the lack of compatible NIC. would you have an Intel Pro/1000 or Broadcom 57xx around to add to the system?

With 3.5, go to vm-help.com and look at the hardware support list. On that page you'll find a link to posting the PCI ids for the storage controller and NIC. Post that back and we can see what we can do for you.

Dave

VMware Communities User Moderator

New book in town - vSphere Quick Start Guide -http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/08/12/new-book-in-town-vsphere-quick-start-guide/.

Do you have a system or PCI card working with VMDirectPath? Submit your specs to the Unofficial VMDirectPath HCL - http://www.vm-help.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=21.