Adaptec 2610SA fails with ESX 3.5

[gcoleman]

Hello,

Previosuly, with ESX 3, I had used my Adaptec 2610SA card which is a 6 port SATA RAID unit. This card has been placed in a PCI slot on my Intel motherboard. Upon bootup I am able to see the drive and I hit Ctrl A to configre the drives. I initialized the drives, created a RAID1 array and rebooted.

ESX 3.5 refuses to see the adapter and or drives. It asks for a boot disk but I have no clue how to make a book disk for Linux. Also I am puzzled as to why it did work in the previous release and is also listed as working in the Vi3 communities for 3.5.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Before the install asks for drivers is there a screen about choosing install media (CD / ftp/ http/ etc). It may be the case that the install is not able to recognize the CD-ROM that you're using. If so you can copy the files from the CD to an http/ ftp server on your network and then specify that as your install source.

[gcoleman]

Dave,

Thanks for the response, but i am not sure how that would work if the ESX Linux boot loader is working? Anyways, i did try an older CD-RW unit I had laying around that I had used previously and I am still having the same problem. Seems strange that it doesn't work now.

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Below is the most probable explanation that I've seen. I have the some problem and it works fine to continue the install by HTTP for me. ESX 3i sees the CD-ROM Ok and is able to install with the same error, but it's using a different installer.

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CD_ROM - No drivers found http://communities.vmware.com/message/875606

I happen to be having the same problem. I think the user having the issue may have left out a very critical detail. the error message occurs just after the screen "Installation Method” where you answer the question "what type of media contains the packages to be installed" Options are "Local CD-ROM, Hard Drive, NFS, FTP, HTTP" When you select "Local CD-ROM" it says "No Drivers Found" however if you continue to read it says " Unable to find any devices for this installation type". ive done some research on Linux distros and there’s tons of people having the issue and all seem to b able to resolve it by specifying something like "linux all-generic-ide irqpoll pci=nommconf " something or other... it basically makes the installer use a generic IDE mode for the CD-ROM, this only happens when the CD-rom is a "SATA" cd rom... dunno why or how... im going to keep looking till I figure it out.. Or maybe I’ll just do the FTP thing... That’s not a bad idea... just wish I could ensure it actually see's the drives before I go through all that trouble.

[gcoleman]

Thanks again for the post. Now this is a standard IDE drive, actually both are, not SATA CDRom drives. Do you think that matters?

[gcoleman]

One last thing, you mentioned to make it available in HTTP or FTP. I am not sure what you mean by that. So on my FTP server I should copy all the contents of the ESX 3.5 CD and make it available online so that ESX will traverese the network and find the files that way?

I only have a windows based system to work with at this point, i hope i can see the files on the cd.

Thanks

[Dave_Mishchenko]

You'll basically copy the files and folders from the install CD to your FTP server. I use HTTP and use a sub-folder but I'm not sure the subfolder is necessary .

The CD-ROM that I have trouble with is also IDE.