Folks looks like the qlogic driver on latest esx4i U1 iso is no good. In my case I have a BL680c blade with a qlogic qmh4062 card installed. After a fresh install off iso I was seeing 12 minute boot times. When it finally came up I couldn't hit it with my vsphere client, I could ssh to it fine but hostd would die out..Also sometime I would see purple screen of death..
Here is the workaround:
1. Remove qlogic card in my case qmh4062
2. Install esx4i U1 from iso
3. Install Vmware CLI on your windows desktop
4. Run esxcfg-info and grab the VID DID SVID SSID info for your qlogic and nics while were at it
5. Go here and enter info from prev step (IO Devices Tab) http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php?ie=UTF-8&q=hardware%20%20compatibility%20vm...
6. Grab the latest driver in my case it was vmw-qla4xxx-524-0l-29vmw-offline_bundle-388799.zip, BCM-bnx2i-1.9.1t.v41.2-offline_bundle-380522.zip,BCM-bnx2-2.0.22f.v41.2-offline_bundle-380522.zip
7. From your windows desktop run Vmware CLI at command prompt run C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware vSphere CLI\bin>vihostupdate.pl --server <host ip/name here> --username root --install --bundle d:\offline-bundle\<driver_offlinebundle_name>.zip (Run this and point to each bundle MAKE SURE ESX host is in MAINTENANCE MODE)
8. After drivers have been applied shut down host, then re-insert qlogic card and you should be good to go
9. No more hostd issue where I couldn't use vsphere client to connect to esx4u U1 server and also boot times are respectable at 2 mins.
