Hi,
IBM System x3100M5 - ESXi5.5
Nothing spectacular about the install. Configured 1Tb RAID5 set and installed ESXi5,5 from CD.
Quite likely that I had a USB drive, which I keep a lot of various helpful files/Doco's, attached to somewhere on the server when I installed ESXi
Have relocated the server to customer site when completed and all booted OK.
A few weeks later relocated server to newly built 'server' room all booted OK.
On the weekend there was a power failure and server refused to boot.
'Failed to boot ESXi5.5' error then would start a version of ESXi5.5 but everything blank (IP Addy set to 0.0.0.0)
Would reconfigure network but could not connect via vSphere and rebooting did exactly same thing. (IP 0.0.0.0 etc)
Boot order was as follows:
ESXi5,5 (PciRoot (0x0) /Pci(0x1D.0x0) /USB(0x0,0x0) /USB (0x4,0x0)
HDD0
HDD1
CDROM
I assumed that the server, when I installed it, somehow hooked to the USB drive that I carry around, however, when I tried it in every port and rebooting, it wouldn't work.
I removed everything back to HDD0 and this was the versions which was setting everything back to IP address of 0.0.0.0 and wouldn't allow me to reconfigure and save.
In the end I tried an upgrade to HDD0 but no change. Started a fresh install on HDD0, preserving datastore, but chickened out when presented with a final warning that the 'existing partitions will be repartitioned, and didn't want to lose the hosts I had on the datastore so installed it onto a second USB drive. Configured UEFI to point to correct boot efi and server started. Configured network and booted up OK. Attached vmx files to inventory and servers booted OK. Everything is back online.
So my questions are:
What did I do wrong in the first place that allowed it to hook to the USB drive? Just by having it attached to the server?
How likely is it that I also plugged the USB drive, every time I moved the server, in exactly the same port I took it out from - I would suggest unlikely and, to be honest, I don't think I had the drive attached every time I powered on the server?
Why was there a version on HDD0 which wouldn't allow me to configure it or attach to it via vSphere?
If I install a new install of the ESXi5.5 onto HDD0, when it warns that it wants to repartition, will I lose the existing datastore even when I opt for the preserve option? I don't want to continue running off this USB drive in preference.
More of a discussion to see if others have experienced something similar and to try and see what I did wrong so I don't repeat it.
Regards and thanks in advance for any suggestions
