ESX 3i Server problems on Sun X6220 Blade

[Trav_R]

Hello all, I am new to virtualization and have a question. I have a SunBlade 6000 chassis populated with two X6220 blades at the moment. I have the free ESXi hypervisor installed on each. I had no trouble creating a virtual machine and installing an OS on the first blade, but the second one is giving me problems. When I try to create a virtual machine, the process hangs at 95% for a good hour or two before finally announcing that it is complete. When I try to power the VM on, it does the same thing, hangs at 95% for over an hour and completes. Has anyone ever encountered this? I've tried searching google and these forums and about all that comes up is stuff about Windows 95.

I'm concerned that my hardware is not compatible with ESXi. I've got the compatibility PDF, and it appears to indicate that a 6220 with an AMD Opteron 2218 would be compatible with an ESX server, but not ESXi like I have. I've attached a copy of the compatibility guide if anyone can take a look and there and see what they think. If it actually isn't compatible, does that just mean that VMware hasn't tested their software with that particular hardware or does it actually mean "incompatible.?" I would think if I could get it to run fine on one blade, then another with the same hardware shouldn't give me any trouble.

I appreciate any help you guys may have to offer on this issue.

[Texiwill]

Hello,

Moved to ESXi forum.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.

CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354

As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

[Dave_Mishchenko · Accepted solution]

It's it supported then it has been tested and certified by the vendor. If it's not it may just be a case that it's not a priority to get it certified. Are you running the same BIOS / firmware versions on both hosts? Any differenences between the two?

[Trav_R]

Okay I just checked the BIOS versions on both and they are in fact different. That's what I get for assuming that since we got them both in at the same time that they would be identical in all respects. I will track down an up to date BIOS version and make sure they're both up to date. Will keep you posted, thanks for the reply.

For the sake of documentation, at this time the working blade's BIOS is 0ABJT030, and the non-working blade's is 0ABJT026.

[Trav_R]

Okay Dave, that took care of it. I updated both the BIOS and Sun's built in management interface, ILOM (Integrated Lights Out Manager.) The ILOM was severly outdated, and I updated it first, before the BIOS. I didn't expect it to work since I hadn't done the BIOS yet, but it did. I first had to remove the old datastore and create a new one but after that I had no trouble creating a VM and installing an OS to it. I still went ahead and updated the BIOS on both machines just to be sure. Thanks for the help, wish I'd have thought of it myself!