Hello,
I've set out to build a couple a cheap whitebox machines, for the purpose of testing out new products like Lab Manager, Stage Manager, etc in a non production setting. Since cheap is the driving factor, I've used AMD X2 5000 cpu's, 4 GB RAM, and 80GB SATA drives.
My motherboard is a jetway M26GT3-SVP, which uses an nvidia MCP61 sata controller. The BIOS is the most recent, and RAID is turned off in the BIOS.
When I attempt to install ESX 3.5 Update 2, the installer simply will NOT see the local disk. I've been all over these forums, and I see that other people have successfully installed onto this chipset... in my case, I can't even install at all. I would be delighted if all I need to do is edit the sata_nv.xml file... but I've not got that far.
To validate the hardware itself, I was able to install Fedora 9 on one of the test machines; KVM/QEMU and AMD-V hardware virt works great! The system is quite snappy, especially considering the cheap price.
As an aside, I did also put in 2 Intel NIC's, since the onboard is not supported... so that is at least squared away.
And... as an fyi, this is how Fedora9 identifies the controller in lshw:
description: IDE interface
product: MCP61 SATA Controller
vendor: nVidia Corporation
physical id: 8
bus info: pci@0000:00:08.0
logical name: scsi0
version: a2
width: 32 bits
clock: 66MHz
capabilities: ide pm msi ht bus_master cap_list emulated
configuration: driver=sata_nv latency=0 maxlatency=1 mingnt=3 module=sata_nv
I would appreciate any and all suggestions!! Thanks!!
If you can get the PCI ids for the controller, then you can check it with this list - http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/Hardware_support.php. These are the devices that ESXi will recognize. If the MCP61 is not listed, then it is possible to modify the install files to see it. Easiest way to do thas is to run ESXi from a USB flash drive.
Thank you for the quick reply, Dave!
Would you know if this modification can also be done on ESX 3.5 (not ESXi)? Also, would you know what files to change? I search through the ESX 3.5 U2 media for a sata_nv.xml file, but it doesn't appear to bo on there... so prior to install, it appears I need to edit something else.
I've found my PCI id to be 03f6, which I see that other people have gotten to work... if only I could get the base system installed!
I appreciate your help!
Well I gave up on this MCP61 controller... I bought a Promise SATA 300 TX2 Plus card for each machine, and ESX 3.5 U1 does see and use that storage!