"OS Not Found" after server re-boot

[Nexent1]

I have installed ESXi 4.0 on to an HP ML150 with a single HD. I am running 4 GB of RAM (soon expaning to 8 GB if I can get this working). I was able to install the ESXi and run vSphere. I was able to set-up and use 3 Virtual Machines on the server. However, when I tried to restart the machine I am receiving an error "Operating System Not Found".

I have checked the boot sequence 10 times and it still is having an issue. I can see it is trying to boot to the CD / DVD drive instead even though the BIOS is set to boot to the tot he HD.

In the BIOS is see that there are not drives detected in the Primary and Secondard master. I am researching that as well to see what I can discover.

So far I really like VMware if I can just get it working correctly.

Your advice is appreciated.

[DSTAVERT]

Drives not detected and no OS found is hardware issue not ESXi. Check your disk data and power cables. Reset the BIOS.

[COdlk]

I am not seeing the ML150 on the HCL. (http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php). I am saying this because I had a similar issue on a Dell server. Install went fine with no problems. I rebooted and got the same message.

david

[Nexent1]

Thank you for the comment. The drive is fine as I am able to install the ESXi on it with no trouble.

[Nexent1]

Thank you Codlk,

You may be right and it may also explain why I cannot load on the VMware Tools as well. I will check in to this a little more to see how I can resolve that issue.

Regards,

[Datto]

If your single drive is a SATA drive, go into the System BIOS of your server and try setting the SATA controller to AHCI mode (or to IDE mode if it's already set to AHCI mode) and then see if yoru server boots up. Make sure to write down what mode your SATA interface was in before you changed it so you can go back to it with no problems.

Datto

[Nexent1]

Thank you for the response.

The drive was set to IDE. I changed it to AHCI and still received the same results. Still getting the Missing Operating System.

Regards,

[DSTAVERT]

"No drives detected" is something you mentioned in your first post. Until you get the drives recognized you won't get anything but a No operating system message. If the No drives detected is what you are experiencing then check the hardware.

[Nexent1]

I worked with HP this morning to verify the hardware and everything is fine there. They are convinced it is a software issue and not related to the hardware. This issue I was having is not a problem with the configuration of the server we are using.

[DSTAVERT]

get a linux rescue CD and boot with that to see if you can see the drives. I am not discounting software but again if you can't see the drives you won't see an operating system. If there was a bootloader on a hard drive it would begin the boot process even if there wasn't an OS to boot. You wouldn't get an os not found you would get a bootloader error or nothing

[Datto]

Try this -- go into the System BIOS or the RAID card F8 BIOS and disable RAID since you only have a single drive (if it's already disabled, enable it). Then try booting. If it still doesn't boot, go into the System BIOS and try SATA in ACHI mode or IDE mode and reboot again to see if that will make the bootup work.

Also, if you have an LSI card in that box, you may have a faulty LSI card like this guy had in his ML150 as described in this HP forum message:

Or the guy here who had two drives be inoperarable on him in his ML1150 and as I remember while I'm typing this, he had a backplane configuration issue:

Datto

[Datto]

Another idea just came to me -- a few days ago I couldn't get a known good working hard drive to boot up on a different box until I performed a Boot N Nuke on the hard drive (some kind of Master Boot Record FUBAR evidently on that hard drive). if you have the ability to nuke your existing hard drive and start your ESX installation all over again, you might try Boot N Nuke - here's the link to where you can freely download Boot N Nuke and then write the ISO to a CD and boot it up to Nuke the existing hard drive:

Datto

[Nexent1]

I tried this and was not able to see the HD. I again called HP support and discussed this with them and again them blamed it on software. I disagreed, but he insisted. I am not really comfortable with HP support at this point.

[Nexent1]

Hi Datto,

I tried both the BIOS settings and the Boot N Nuke (cool program) and neither worked.

The odd part is if I load just VMware I can re-boot the machine and VM ware will load. However, once I add a virtual machine with an operating system when I re-start the server I get Missing Operating System.

I think it is time to ship the server back to HP and buy something on the HCL. Probaby be a Lenovo or Dell this time as I was not pleased with HP support. I do think it may be hardware related as well but HP did not give me any confidence on this part.

Thanks everyone for the advice and helping me on this.