ESX 3.5 (and 3.0) installer not seen AIC-7892B SCSI RAID at install.

[MrZorry]

Hello;

I just finish the VMware ESX 3.5 class. Never having had my "hands on" a an ESX server, I got home all exited and ready for some more. Driving home from class I remembered my old "faith full" Win2K RADI5 67.8 Gb (3 drive) dual P-III 1Ghz, 1.5 Gb RAM, that I had some ware in my garage. A year ago had been replaced by an IBM xSeries 345.

Literally got home and started moving things around till I found it. Back in my home office powered it up and LOL and BEHOLD. Old Faithfull up and running with all services running just as it had been a year ago.

Downloaded the ESX 3.5 trial iso image (you got 60 days). Burned CD and proceed to install ESX....... That was last night about 7:00 pm. 19 hrs later (with only 4 hrs of sleep) the thing still not running.

The ESX installer will not detect my Adaptec 2100S (AIC-7892B). This are the messages;

-"No drives have been found. You probably..."

If I manually try to ADD device and select Adaptec AHA-2740, 28xx, 29xx, 39xx (aic7xxx)

-"Loading AIC 7xxx driver"....

Nothing, back to Devices

If I do F2 in Select Device Driver to Load, select fd0, installer reads floppy but ask to insert again. I have searched all the Internet for a drivers, starting with Adaptec site, but nothings working. I have tried different BIOS settings, and different PCI slots.

Like I said system will boot to Windows. ESX installer does see bout of the nics.

May I should have said this in the beginning, but I am strictly a Windows Admin. No Linux, or UNIX like OS experience.

I have searched for a HCL to see if the MOBO chipset is supported, but not lucky finfing it. The AIC-7892B and the motherboard BIOS had been upgraded to the lasts revision. This is the MOBO information;

CPU

Dual Socket 370 for Intel® Pentium® III (FC-PGA) and Celeron^TM Processor.

Supports PIII 500MHz-1GHz processor.

Chipset

VIA® 694DP chipset. (North-Bridge 510 BGA)

PentiumR III FSB @133MHz

AGP 4x and PCI Advanced high performance memory controller.

Support PC100/133 SDRAM, VCM, ESDRAM technology.

VIA® VT82C686B chipset. (South-Bridge 352 BGA)

Advanced Power Management Features.

Dual bus Master IDE Ultra DMA 33/66.

FSB

66/100/133MHz FSB

Main Memory

Four 168-pin unbuffered DIMM using eight memory banks.

Support a maximum memory size of 2GB.

ECC (1-bit Error Code Correction)

Supports 3.3v SDRAM DIMM.

Slots

One AGP 4x slot.

One CNR (Communication Network Riser)

Five 32-bit Master PCI bus slots.

Supports 3.3v/5v PCI bus interface.

Promise IDE RAID

Dual bus master IDE Ultra DMA 100.

Up to 133MB/sec burst transfer rate (through PCI bus).

1394 PHY Controller

TI® TSB41LV02 PHY Digital-to-Analog Transceiver.

Supports up to Two 1394/1394A v 2.0 Compatible Data Channels.

1394 Link Layer Controller

TI® TSB12LV26 1394 Link Layer Host Controller.

IEEE 1394, 1394 OHCI v1.0 & 1394A v2.0 compatible.

Supports 100/200/400 Mbps High Throughput.

3.3V & 5V Operation for PCI to 1394 Interface.

On-Board IDE

An IDE controller on the VIA VT82C686B chipset provides IDE HDD/CD-ROM with PIO, Bus Master and Ultra DMA 33/66/100 operation modes.

Can connect up to four IDE devices.

On-Board Peripherals

1 Floppy port supports 2 FDD with 360K, 720K, 1.2M, 1.44M and 2.88Mbytes.

2 Serial ports (COM A + COM B), 1 Parallel port supports SPP/EPP/ECP mode.

4 USB ports.

1 IrDA connector for SIR/ASKIR/HPSIR.

[RParker]

Did you see if this device was on the HCL for ESX? The devices on there have to be supported, which means drivers are automatically included. You may be able to find a driver on the Adaptec site (which I believe now is Roxio) and see if they have a Linux driver for it. I doubt it, but that's all you have. If it's not on there there isn't much you can do.

ESX, like Windows, is pretty strict about hardware it supports, but if the vendor doesn't offer any additiona drivers, you are pretty much out of luck.

[BenGeorge]

Hey MrZorry,

Sorry to hear about your delema, however, i have also run into the same problem, I don't understand why VMware doesn't support the Adaptec SCSI RAID 2100S card, yet they support the 2120S, 2200S, but not the 2100S, the only difference between these cards is the fact that the 2100S is a 32bit Card with U160 and the 2120S and 2200S are 64bit U320 cards, yet they support a much older card AAA-131U2 RAID Card and the AHA-29160N which are 32bit with U160 support. My point is the 2000S Series cards are in the same series, just different bit transfer. I think the person who decided to skip out that card needs to be SLAP in the HEAD!

But then again that's just my opinion, so with all that being said, to use ESX 3.0.x I had to go out and purchase another card which i didn't want to spend that money just for that. I could understand if it was another hardware, then yeah, i wouldn't have mind.

So bottom line "MrZorry" the 2100S Card will NOT work with ESX 3.0.x I have done allot of search and researching until I came across the "VI3_IO_Guide.pdf" from VMware which indicated that this card is not supported. It wasn't on the HCL, that's when I gave up and purchased another card, the 2120S Card. You can get one on eBay for a good price, less than the retail price, it's used, however it works.

I have also attached the "vi3_io_guide.pdf" so check it out.

Thanks,