Another SATA ESXi install situation

[adamjg]

Ok, I built a generic machine to run some VMs. It's a whitebox, mobo is an Asus P5S-MX SE with an SiS southbridge/RAID controller on it. I got the typical no drives available, so I went through and got the boot off of a USB key which worked. However, I still don't see the one SATA disk I have. I've tried BIOS configurations as IDE/AHCI and RAID, none of which work.

I read a bit about the pciid file, but I'm unable to find that file. However, I don't exactly know where I should be configuring this. I hit ALT-F1 after the machine boots, do "unsupported" then the root password, and the path that is listed in a few docs here must be for ESX and not ESXi.

I do have a supported SCSI RAID controller but I only have 2 72Gb disks and not all that much space free. I would really rather use the SATA drive which is a 500Gb.

Any suggestions? Am I out of luck without getting a PCI SATA card? I don't mind booting off of either the USB or the SCSI, but would like to use the SATA as storage. Thanks!

Adam

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Hello Adam, welcome to the VMware Community forums. What model of SATA controller does the MB have?

[adamjg]

Hi Dave, the RAID/SATA controller is listed as "SIS 968 South Bridge" which is the chipset for both the IDE and SATA.

As I said I'm up and running with the SCSI, but it's an old controller with slow drives, and I have a feeling a standard newer SATA drive will blow this away performance wise. Any ideas?

Adam

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Hi Adam, so are you running lspci at the console? If you run lspci - v and lspci -p that should get you the PCI ids for the device and if a module is loaded. What do you get for that?

[adamjg]

Hi Dave, thanks for the reply again. If I run lspci, device 00:05.00 is Mass storage controller: Silicon Integrated Systems . If I run lspci -p there's nothing loaded under the module column next to 00:05.00. If I run lspci -v it scrolls by too fast to see what's listed for this device.

Some background if it matters: I'm a Windows/Citrix guy with a lot of vmware, but mostly from the windows admin side. Last time I really dealt with the esx host admin was 1.52. Back then we used to use putty to ssh into the host. For the commands above I did ALT-F1 and entered unsupported then my password to get to the console (which I think was alt-f2 back then?). Is there an easier way for me to get to the console here, or ssh in, or am I in the right place? Apologies for being a unix moron, but well, that's what I am Is there a command to get it to scroll each page when running lspci -v?

And finally (for this message at least), is there a compatible driver for the SiS? and a way to edit the pciid file to force it to use one of the drivers installed? I'd be happy to do some testing if it would help the community as well.

Adam

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Here's some instructions for setting up SSH - http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/ESXi_enable_SSH.php. Don't worry there are a lot of other Windows / Citrix people around here (I'm one myself).

Here's a list of hardware that ESXi will see (and attempt to load a driver for) - http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/Hardware_support.php. Unless the driver has been developed for ESXi, you won't be able to load for example a Liunx driver for the device. On my site I have a whitebox list and at the bottom are some SATA controllers that you could add. The Silicon Image 3512 has worked for a number of people, works with RAID 1 and if fairly cheap.

[excelsi]

Hi Dave,

I tried the instructions for setting up ssh on esxi.It is the actual version (comes out yesterday after version2 bugfix from vmware).

But i hang at the moment at the first step, when i typed "unsupported" console. After that there comes no tech support mode or password prompt.

I'm sure that i typed "unsupported" right.....

Any suggestions?

Thanks

[Dave_Mishchenko]

It is posible to disable tech support mode. In the VI client go to Configuration \ Advanced Settings. Then go to vmkernel\boot\techsupportmode and make sure it is enabled.

Otherwise try "unsupported" again.

[excelsi]

Hi Dave,

i found it....my failure

I forgot enter after unsupported....

"Mea Culpa" if you know it

Thanks anyway

[adamjg]

Hi Dave thanks much, finally got SSH working (I believe the server has to be rebooted). I tried a few combinations of SATA drivers in the simple.map but still wasn't able to get anything to load properly. I ordered a cheap $20 Silicon Image 3512 from newegg and will try that once it arrives. Do you think it will work right out of the box, or will I have to "assign" a driver to it? Next question is, do you think it will work for a CD install or will I still need to boot off of the USB key? Thanks for all the help!

Adam

[Dave_Mishchenko]

It should work without modification and from what I've heard there are no issues installing directly to it from the CD.