ESX3i will boot from USB but not installer CD

[wellssd]

Folks...

I've got a problem I've been banging my head against for about 3 days now, so I figured I'd ask and see if anyone can help. So...before you tell me it's not supported because it's not on the HCL, don't waste your time, I already know and choose to attempt to make it work anyway...it's this little think about me called 'stubborness'.

First, I can boot the machine via USB with no issues. I take the disk image and copy it to a USB hard drive as outlined on www.vm-help.com, and all is good.

However, when I try to boot from the installer CD I've created from the downloadable ISO, or even via PXE, immediately after the "Initializing processors..." message comes up on the yellow / gray installer screen, I get a PSOD. The message is:

NOT_IMPLEMENTED /build/mts/release/bora-110271/bora/vmkernel/filesystems/visorfs/visorfsObj.c:2411

Made me think something was off with my CD, so I burnt 5 more...all with the same result. So maybe something with the drive? Well, that's when the PXE came in, same result. If any other information would help in diagnosing the issue, I'd be more than happy to provide it, just let me know...

Thanks,

Scott

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Hello Scott, welcome to the VMware Community forums. What sort of hardware are you using and what model of storage controller does the host have? Do you have any hardware (NIC / PCI devices / etc) in the server you could disable prior to the install? Can ESXi use local storage when you boot from USB drive?

[wellssd]

Dave,

I'm using a Asus M2NBP-VM CSM motherboard. I went so far as to disable all of the onboard devices through the BIOS, and nothing changed the outcome. The only add-in card is a Hauppage WinTV HVR-1600 TV tuner, as this hardware is currently a PVR.

After I boot via USB, yes, I'm able to use the local storage, create a VMFS, add the machine to VC, onboard NIC works...everything when booted via USB seems to be pretty good...

Scott

[JMills]

FarmerScott: Since you have a reproducible situation, it may be of interest. I'll pass along this thread to folks.

[mhennecke]

Scott,

How much memory does the system have? The error message you are getting is related to the system running out of memory very early in its initialization. I believe that the minimum memory requirements for running ESXi are 1GB.

[wellssd]

mhennecke:

You're right. I would have never guessed it, but it was running out of RAM. The system does in fact have 1GB; however, as I mentioned before the motherboard is an Asus M2NBP-VM CSM model, which has integrated graphics. The default shared frame buffer is 32MB, simply backing that down to 16MB, regardless of other on-board peripheral configuration did the trick.

I'll be upgrading RAM and installing ESXi on this hardware in a few days, but for the moment, it looks like this motherboard is a good fit for anyone looking for a smaller (portable) system that can run ESXi. SATA and NIC both work when booted via USB, so I'll have to assume they'd work when booted from an internal drive after install. Now if I could just find a Mini-ITX board that also supported SVM...and possibly a quad core AMD processor.

Scott

[JMills]

I'm a big fan of the mini-ITX form-factor, very tempting.

Were I an Independent Systems Integrator...

[mrhanson]

If anybody finds their way to this thread looking for this same error on a MacBook Pro:

The same condition occurs on the new unibody MacBook Pros while attempting to boot ESXi (following the instructions posted at http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-6590 and/or http://www.brandonfreitag.com/vmware/VI35.pdf). Raising the RAM to 1.4 GB clears it up.