Recently I installed Vmware Esxi 5.1 on IBM x3650 M4 server with 16Gb RAM and 1.36Tb disk (Raid 5). And installed hosts SBS2011 and SBS2008R2 (64bit) ok. Just need create another VM utilise the old Windows 2003 R2 license. Doing same, allocated Windows 2003 R2 iso file (32bit), put on NFS datastore (tried to link CD/DVD from local disk iso file as well, same result). Create new VM, with 1 CPU and 4Gb RAM, 100Gb disk space, SCSI controller is Lsi parallel (that Windows 2003 R2 had built in driver). Windows 2003 R2 installation starts, find disk controller and hard disk no problem. After installation created partition and finished format the partition, it returns error, "setup was unable to format the partition. The disk may be damaged." I tried similar setttings on another Vmware Esxi 5.1 as well. Same result. Any idea why this is failing.
