Installation of ESX stops at 10% of formatting

[chengcsw]

I am trying to install ESX 4 on a Dell PowerEdge 850 server with the following configurations:

PowerEdge(TM) 850 with Intel(R) Pentium(R) D Processor 3.0GHz/2X2MB,800MHz FSB

CERC-SATA RAID Controller Card (Adaptec)

The installation can detect the RAID, but it stops at 10% of formatting for almost 12 hours and the hard disk lightbulb is off.

Do I need any special drivers for the RAID or ESX 4 cannot be installed on PentiumD without VT?

[Kasraeian]

Hello,

You can check your CPU in here.

And also check this link (same system)

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MCTS, VCP

[Kasraeian]

Sorry, the Link was for 3.5

And also check this link (same system)

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MCTS, VCP

[Borja_Mari]

Hi,

oficially vmware doesn't support your PowerEdge server.

The SATA controller you have is not supported, too.

You can check here:

in systems & IO devices tabs.

You can check this good community driven HCL:

But i did a quick check and your server and SATA controller aren't in the community HCL.

If you want to use SATA drives with esxi 4.0 according to this official vmware documentation ( ) the controller must be one of this:

SATA disk drives – SATA disk drives connected behind supported SAS controllers or supported on-board SATA controllers.

Supported SAS controllers include:

LSI1068E (LSISAS3442E)

LSI1068 (SAS 5)

IBM ServeRAID 8K SAS controller

Smart Array P400/256 controller

Dell PERC 5.0.1 controller

Supported on-board SATA include:

Intel ICH9

Nvidia MCP55

ServerWorks HT1000

Esxi 4.0 won't install in you server configuration.

Un saludo/Regards,

Pablo

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[Zeon101]

You should also check the Intel website to make sure that your particular CPU has VT-X extensions. By the looks of it, it does however if its an older model it may not.

[chengcsw]

OK, that means ESX server could not be installed on my system from scratch.

I assume that ESX cannot just install on a host OS like CentOS.

Instead, I have to install CentOS, then install VMware workstation, and then have it virtualize ESX?

[Borja_Mari]

Hi,

you would be able to install esxi 4.0 on a top of workstation/player. But a requirement for a successful esxi install is a Intel VT or AMD-V CPU capable.

Check this: http://communities.vmware.com/message/1458338#1458338

Un saludo/Regards,

Pablo

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[Zeon101]

No No.. I think you have misunderstood what ESX(i) is. It replaces a host OS like Cent OS as in its the underlying operating system, albeit a very basic operating system which provides an absolutely streamlined interface between virtual machines and the underlying hardware. If you want to run something like CentOS as the host you can use VMware server - performance is far inferior to ESX though.

[Danno9]

This is an old thread, but I found it on search for issues with ESXi 4.0

and the PE 830 using the CERC 1.5/6ch RAID controller. Figured I'd post

an answer in case others are having the same issues and using the same

search. I had a lot of SCSI errors in the logs pointing to an issue

with the aacraid driver. This is commonly accepted as a non-working

controller for ESXi and I just left it out of the server and used the

onboard SATA controller.

With the introduction of ESXi 4.1, it WORKS!!! On a whim, I

re-installed the CERC 1.5/6ch card (Adaptec 2610SA) and loaded a clean

install of ESXi 4.1 on the SATA drive connected to the onboard SATA

controller. Rebooted and it recognized the CERC 1.5/6ch controller and

the RAID-5 array I had made with 5 drives using the BIOS utility. I was

able to format a VMFS datastore and used the entire array for iSCSI

storage with OpenFiler (the formatting was where it would always hang and crash on ESXi 4.0). Some benchmark testing shows the CERC

controller being slightly slower than the single SATA drive connected

to the onboard controller. However, after turning on write-caching, it

was about 10-15% faster.

Not super performance by any means, but I'm glad I was able to finally

use this card for creating a 2-TB volume for backing my VMs..