Trouble installing ESXi 4.1 on HP Microserver

[swright7]

Hi all

I am trying to install ESXi 4.1 update1 on a HP Microserver.  The installation starts off fine and things seem to work as expected but when i get to the EULA page it asks me to hit F11 to accept it doesnt do anything.  Although i can hit Esc to quit so i know it sees the keyboard.  I have scrolled to the bottom of the page but still no joy.   I can use F10 or F12 during the bios boot phase though so at this point it appears the function keys work.

I am using a Microsoft USB keyboard so i am wondering if its something to do with this.  On the half grey half yellow screen prior to this where it is loading drivers there is a red message that comes up right at the end but goes so quickly i cannot see what it says.

I am installing from a USB stick created with UNetBootin and have tried both the HP Proliant specific iso for ESXi and the vanilla one as well.

I am guessing it is an issue with the keyboard driver that is getting loaded but im not sure how to change this.  I only have the one keyboard at the moment and dont want to go and buy another just to find i have the same problem.

Is this something others have experienced at all?

Many thanks in advance

Simon

[DSTAVERT]

There is at least one other sucessful Microserver install. There are current posts by the other sucessful install. It is entirely possible that there is an issue with this particular keyboard. I would check the HP support and drivers section for your server. See if there are BIOS updates. If you have a USB hub available try putting that between your keyboard and server.

[chriswahl]

Can you use a remote console session through iLO, or is this not available?

I have yet to install ESXi on a server using the local keyboard so this is not an issue I've run in to, but I have done several on iLO 2 & 3.

[DSTAVERT]

Just for reference. These are very small "first server" devices and don't have any of the niceties of the mainstrean servers, so no ILO.

[swright7]

Thanks for the replies

No iLo im afraid although there is a management card you can buy for it but it costs around £60 so is a bit much.

I am pretty sure its the keyboard so i am going to pickkup a cheap alternative today and see if that works.  

Cheers

Simon

[DSTAVERT]

Let us know how it goes.

Good luck.

[bulletprooffool]

If the new keyboard does not do the trick - it is worth having a go at downloading fresh media (or at least running an MD5 check)

[swright7]

The new keyboard sorted the problem so I can now get past the F11 prompt. Unfortunately I have hit another issue which is that installing from USB gives an error saying that it cannot mount the media at the point it is going to start copying the files. I am going to try on a different computer as I don't have a cd rom in this one but I all else fails I will get a cheap USB DVD rom and install from that

Cheers

Simon

[Generious]

Simon,

What I did on my own little microserver was extracted the image.dd and restored this onto a 2GB usb stick and set the microserver to boot from USB plugged into into the usb port on the inside.

This worked no problem at all everything was detected inc the broadcom nic.

http://www.techhead.co.uk/installing-vmware-esxi-4-0-on-a-usb-memory-stick-the-official-way

At least if you run it from USB you can use the four device bays for storage only without ESX taking up one of the disks.

[swright7]

Hi all

ESXi 4.1 is now running quite happily on the Microserver.  After swapping the keyboard i was able to use the F11 button but kept running into the media not found issue when it tried to copy files over.  After many different attempts i tried writing the imagedd file to the usb and running it directly as suggested and it worked straight away.

Thanks to everyone for all your help.

Cheers

Simon