Supermicro H8QG6 - unable to boot ESX/ESXi 4.x - NOT IMPLEMENTED bora/vmkernel/hardware/ioapic.c:607

[chrono2002]

Hello sirs!

Unable to get VMware ESX/ESXi 4.x woking on my hardware:

http://www.supermicro.com/Aplus/motherboard/Opteron6100/SR56x0/H8QG6_-F.cfm

http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/1U/818/SC818TQ-1400LP.cfm

http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/AOC-USAS2-L8i.cfm?TYP=I&RAID=Y

See attachment "hardware.png" for a full hardware list

Updated to following BIOS revisions:

Supermicro H8QG6/H8QGi

Build ver: 1.0c

Build date: 10/11/10

Still gives error "NOT IMPLEMENTED" during boot, see attachment screen "error.png"

Tried to modify almost all BIOS settings, loading fail-safe, optimal defaults with no results

I've googled so far and find out that this error caused by incorrect ACPI implementation

The ESXi can be booted only by disable ACPI (acpi=off) during kernel loading but the performance is far from great

(http://communities.vmware.com/thread/158280)

I've read that Opteron systems is supported in ESX/i HCL

I've trying now to contact Supermicro support to say something about this issue

A lot of people try to get their systems work with acpi=off

What is it? Is it a hardware problem or VMware-only issue?

And if it VMware's, why it's not fixed so far? Windows 2008 R2 works great on my hardware

Hope to get some comments

Thanks

[ScottChapman]

So I was running into a similar problem. I was able to get my machine to finally boot by disabling ACPI but enabling APIC in the BIOS. Then add noioapic to your boot options.

That got my machine up and running, but it was unusably slow. Still noodling on it.

Love to know if you find an answer!

[Nick_H]

I've got exactly the same issue on an HP DL380 G5. Would love to know if you've got this resolved or not.

I also have two server, both identical, where one works perfectly, and the other doesn't.

Hope to hear from you.

Cheers

[gcakici]

Has anybody reached a solution on this topic? It was reported in November 2010 but today still same problem going on.

Thanks

Gokalp

[Nick_H]

Ok, I've resolved this issue on our server.

The  issue was caused by the memory not being setup in the correct locations.  For this server (DL380 G5) the chips need to have the same size in each  bank.

Having relocated the chips, and restarted the install, all is working well.