ESXi Upgrade from 4.0 to 4.1U1 results in hour-long boot time
I have ESXi 4.0 running on an Intel S5000PAL with 32GB of ram and an LSI SAS 8708ELB controller. Usually it takes around 30 seconds to boot, as you'd expect. If I update to the current release of ESXi using esxupdater, the machine takes around 17 minutes (sic!) to get from "initalizing vmkernel" to "vmkernel loaded". If you wait it out, it apparently gets stuck eventually at "module vfat loaded". After resetting it reverts back to 4.0 and boots without problems. I have already updated the LSI controlelr to the current firmware. What else can I do? Does anybody else have this kind of problem?
The system is 64bit capable. VT is activated. We have 64 bit guest systems running under 4.0, Linux 2.6 as well as Windows Server 2008 R2. The board is NOT on the HCL though.
everything you said does not confirm the system is compatible for 4.1U1. Please provide details on all your hardware. What hardware vendor is your ESXi 4.0 instance running on? You have confirmed your components on the HCL for 4.1U1?
Just a guess. Did you already check the Intel site for firmware upgrades for the mainboard.
Indeed, I did. However the iflash32 utility gets stuck at "flashing... 0%" for extended periods of time, although the jumpers have been set correctly. According to the readme's there have been no fixes that would be relevant for vmware in the two version since then so I haven't paid more attention to that.
I know this isn't something you want to hear, but I believe you are running into a compatibility issue. In the meantime, it just may be worth sticking with 4.0, since you know it works. Piecing together a "whitebox" is sometimes very difficult to find compatible parts to support rollups and upgrades to the Hypervisor.
