ESXi on a Dell SC440?

[rljudge]

Hi all,

I just purchased a SC440 and when I try to install ESXi I get an message saying "Unable to find a supported device to write the VMWare ESX Server 3i 3.5.0 image to". Another user says he installed it. Am I missing something here? Do I need to prepare the hard disk? Wipe it? I'm going to temporaraly hook up another hard disk and see what happens.

SC440

Xeon dual core 3050

4 gig memory

SATA HD 160GB

IDE CD/DVD

Floppy

Thanks!

Rick

[thnx4playing]

Are single SATA drives support by ESX? I was under the impression (but haven't checked in a few months) that only RAID SCSI setups were supported, but a few SATA raid controllers worked as well.

[rljudge]

Hmmm.... The knowledgebase says ESX3.5 now supports SATA drives and doesn't mention RAID. Does this cover ESXi also, I wonder?

Funny thing is, I have an eval copy of ESX Server 3.5 and it installs and runs fine. Go figure.

I'll probably not be buying a RAID system just for this small server application if it requires a SCSI RAID. Although I do have an old SCSI3 RAID card in the bone yard. I also found a couple of 4gig drives I could play with. It'd be slow.

Anyone using ESXi on similar Dell hardware?

Thanks,

Rick

[dr00l]

Yes. Both ESXi U2 and ESXi U3 fully recognize the hardware (onboard NIC and onboard SATA) on the SC440. Regular ESX 3.5U3 broke the SATA support. See the following thrread for more discussion: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/122489?tstart=0&start=30

[Dave_Mishchenko · Accepted solution]

ESXi supports the Intel ICH7 controller but it is for host CD-ROM use only. ESX(i) only supports SATA drives where connected to dual mode SAS controllers listed on the official HCL, but both will recognize and work with a number of SATA controllers. Do you know the specific model of controller that your Dell has? If it is the ICH7, then you might need a work around to get ESXi to install.

[rljudge]

Thanks for the help guys. I installed a two port SATA controller card I had and disabled the onboard SATA controller, plugged in the hard drive and ESXi recognized it. ESXi installd and running now. Converted a VM I had running on my PC under VMware Server and it runs with no problem.

On snag. I have a couple of VMs that were set up with IDE drives under Server 1.x. Converter says they cant be converted. Off to search for a workaround.

Thanks again,

Rick

[okokokok]

I have tried to install ESXi 3.5 u3 on a SC440 with 2.5G RAM using the onboard SATA controller. I get the same message that it cannot find a drive to install the image to. I woul dprefer to use the onboard SATA. Is there a workround that will work with the onboard controller.

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Could you post the model and PCI id for your controller - http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/find_PCI_ID.php?

[dr00l]

I PXE boot my SC440 with ESXi 3.5 U3, and it recognizes (previously VMFS formatted volumes) running on the native SATA controller. That being said, I've never tried to install ESXi 3.5 U3 to the drives on the SC440, only run it off of PXE (and USB Flash).

Below is the relevent portion of the lspci and lspci -v -p output from my SC440:

00:31.02 Mass storage controller: Intel Corporation 82801GB/GR/GH (ICH7 Family) Serial ATA Storage Controller IDE

00:31.02 8086:27c0 1028:01df 5/ 5/0xa1 C V ide vmhba1

[anVha]

Hi there

I'm getting the same error message when trying to install ESXi 3.5 U3 on a machine with ICH7 Controller. I've already checked my device and vendor ID and found out that's the same controller like in the Dell SC440. When I boot with ESXi on an USB flash device I can access both of my hdds via VI Client - formatting them with vmfs is also no problem. I would be glad if there could be found a solution to install ESXi on a device connected to the ICH7 controller.

greetings

andre

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Welcome to the VMware Community forums. Update 3 introduced a change to simple.map in which the ICH7 controllers started to use the IDE driver instead of ata_piix. This was done as the ICH7 controller is now supported for use with CD-ROMs (it's not supported for VMFS). That change breaks the ability to install by default onto ICH7 connected drives, but you should be able to work around it with this - http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/ESXi_install_to_IDE_drive/ESXi_install_to_IDE_drive.php.

See this thread for some more info on this issue - http://communities.vmware.com/message/1096772#1096772.

[anVha]

Hi Dave

I've got ESXi on my harddisk now. Everything seems to work fine. Many thanks for your help!!

[Lardy]

Any chance of this configuration change being fixed in the near future - perhaps in U4, Dave?

L.

[Dave_Mishchenko]

At this point I would guess that this is a permanent change.

[Lardy]

That is disapointing. The narrowing of standardised installation-base is nonsensical - particularly when support for such was forthcoming previously, and worked well. This will impact on a lot of smaller developers / small-firms, and narrow the user-base who can install ESX(i) and become familiar with it - and hence, those "growing-up" with it.

With luck, the Architects of this project will reconsider. Thanks for your interim-fix anyway.

L.