ESX 3.5i Update 4 On Sunfire X2200 M2

[curtorkar]

Hi,

We have a sunfire X2200 M2 system. Two Sata 1TB drives connected in Raid 1 via

LSI Logic SAS3041E-R - storage controller (RAID) - SATA-300 / SAS - PCI Exp.

Installed VMware-VMvisor-Installer. 3.5.0Update4_15.38.75.i386. Installation worked fine. Created Data store and then created guestvms.

Problem: After rebooting the system, the vmware host does not boot up saying Missing operating system.

Not sure whats going on. Anybody has had good experience with Sunfire X2200 M2's?

Thanks,

--Walter

[bunglega]

I'm having the exact same problem. If you disable the RAID controller via the BIOS, ESXi will boot as expected ... I really want to utilize a mirror set though. I would hate to loose a disk and as a result, my virtual machines.

Has ANYONE had success using a Sunfire X2200 M2 with ESXi and the integrated NVidia (Re-branded LSI SAS3041E-R) RAID controller? Installation works fine using the iSCSI hack ... however, after the first reboot I get an "Operating System Not Found" error message.

Thanks,

Wes

[bunglega]

UPDATE:

Apparently the problem only shows up when the server is powered off and then powered back on. As long as I leave the server turned on and only REBOOT or RESTART ESXi - I am able to boot from my mirror set. As soon as I turn the power off and on - I receive the "No Operating System Found."

I can blow away the RAID set and re-install ESXi and again, it will boot until I power the machine off. I found that if I physically remove DISK 2, the RAID controller reports a "degraded status" but ESXi will boot. I can then re-seat DISK 2 and ESXi continues to run and I can restart / reboot as needed. Once power is turned off, the same error returns though and I must repeat this process.

This seems like a bug in ESXi to me - anyone else seen this behavior with ANY configuration?

Thanks,

Wes