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chrisuch
Contributor
Contributor

Interesting Upgrade Failure ESX 4 - Fail to Load storage-drivers

Using multiple S5000PSL Servers with Adaptec 5805.

Decided to trial ESX4 on one of the servers.

Both using the manual update script with DVD in drive or using the VI Client Host Upgrade Utility, upon reboot / while loading drivers, the storage-driver just hangs.

Have also retried downloading media twice to see if this was the problem.

Intel Firmware, Adaptec Firmware all up to date.

Hangs indefinately at point.

>> Loading 34.storage-drivers

>> status: progress=0.27 ; messageID=LOADDRIVERS; Loading 34.storage-drivers

>> 26% Complete - Loading 34.storage-drivers

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Datto
Expert
Expert

Hold down the TAB key or the ALT+RIGHT SHIFT key for a few seconds when it gets to that point where it stops thinking and see if that will make it proceed. Does on a couple of my white boxes wtih Kuma processors.

Datto

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dab
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Possible it's the IDE/SATA Controller which is onboard, because 5805 is working fine in ESXi 4 and this should be the same driverpackage as in ESX4

Datto
Expert
Expert

Also note that you should be using some kind of MD5 checking on your downloads (such as MD5Deep) -- I had several manual downloads complete successfully but fail the MD5 checksum yesterday. The VMware Download Manager is a better way to go than to download the ESX 4.0 files manually (assuming you're not behind a proxy where the VMware Download Manager can't work properly). If you don't perform some kind of check on the completed download then you'll not likely know whether a problem is due to a bad download or due to something else.

Datto

nffrk
Contributor
Contributor

Have the same issue on Primergy TX300 S4, LSI MegaRaid.

Any ideas?

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chrisuch
Contributor
Contributor

Found the source of the problem.

I think I have a faulty Adaptec 5805. The card is listed on HCL but we were previously getting PSOD maybe once every 2-3 months.

Originally once every week, but we upgraded the drives within from Seagate SATA 1.5GB/s to 3GB/s for a particular model that was faulty.

So, with the new drives working a hell of a lot better and less (but still evident) PSOD, we prodded on, and I hoped ESX 4 would have an adaptec driver fix for this particular server.

Also upgraded EVERY version of the firmware for the 5805 when it came out. Installing Adaptec Storage Manager would cause the box to PSOD quite frequently, had to remove it to keep the box stable.

Decided to swap out the Adaptec 5805 with a 3405 and the setup process loaded the storage-drivers nearly instantly, no problems since then.

Both devices even utilized the same ABM-800 Battery Kit

So my best advice, if the rest of your box is HCL or close to, throw out (or get your card sorted under warranty), I have a feeling in our case the memory module (512MB) on the Adaptec 5805 is faulty and the card is less than 6 months old.

Very painful process to diagnose as I dont think its something you can just evidently test.

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