Dell 1650 Internal NICS

[atbat05]

Hi everyone,

I bought 2 Dell 1650's to run VMware 3.5 in my home lab. The install went well and everything but the two internal nics seem to work well. I know the 1650 has not been on the HCL since 2.5 but I thought maybe someone could help me out.

I am trying to get the 2 onboard NIC cards to work. Any help would really be appreciated.

thanks,

chris

[ctfoster]

I remember trying to get ESX going on a 1650 some time back and ran into the same problem. Just invest in a multi-port Intel Pro card - it's not worth struggling with the onboard NICS.

[John847]

Did you ever get the internal NICs going? I am thinking of purchasing a server or two for a home lab also and can find the Dell 1650s on ebay... Thanks

[Hairyman]

Hmm,

I was hoping to be able to use some EoL 1650 / 2650s for some testing but if the on boards don't work. but i remember using some old dell servers before they were redeployed again for testing and using my pc as the virtual center server and i think they were 6th gen servers

[Dave_Mishchenko]

You could always add an Intel Pro /1000 NIC to the server. I've used the low end GT / MT models and they've been fine. ESX 3.5 also is able to run with a number of SATA controllers so you might find that you could put together a cheap whitebox for a pretty low price. The likely advantage also is that you would get a processor with Intel VT so you could run 64 bit VMs. Here's a like of systems that the users here have tested - http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3.5/Whiteboxes_SATA_Controllers_for_ESX_3.5_3i.htm.