Memory upgrade - stuck at loading scheduler

[MaartenSCK]

I am trying to upgrade the RAM memory on my ESXi 5.1 host licensed with the essentials kit.

Currently the host has 32 Gb memory. If I insert an additional 32, bringing it to 64 Gb, the OS reboots itsself during the step "initializing scheduler".

I cannot seem to find info stating that the essentials license comes with a 32 Gb limitation. Anybody knows if it does or not?

If it is not license related, we will look into hiring someone to have a look at the problem but just want to make sure it is not a license issue.

Thanks for your reply.

[Jayden56]

Hi

Welcome to communities.

Make sure you are using same module\frequency memory , most of the time if you use different frequency might be problem

Even those are supported frequency memory.

[MaartenSCK]

Hi Jayden,

The memory inserted is exactly the same and is also correctly recognised by the BIOS of the machine.

Originally the machine was having 4 * 8 GB. After inserting an additional 4 * 8 GB the boot fails.

Furthermore, as a test, I have removed all the memory and replaced it in the original banks with exactly the same DIMMS of  4 * 16 and the same problem occurs.

So it seems that whatever combo I put over 32 Gb  (either 8*8 or 4*16), the OS fails half fail during the boot cycle..

[Linjo]

Whats your mainboard? (Vendor and model)

What CPU do you have? (1 or 2, vendor and model)

// Linjo

[MaartenSCK]

Linjo,

The host is a Dell PowerEdge R720 with 2 CPU's.

The origional memory, consisting out of 4 * 8 Gb was inserted in banks A1, A2, B1, B2. When installing the additional 4 * 8 banks A3, A4 , B3, B4 were used on top of this. The host boots fine and recognises the memory correctly.

Since the OS keeps rebooting halfway load, just as a test, I removed all memory and inserted 4 identical 16 Gb modules in slots A1, A2, B1, B2. Also in this scenario, the OS does not load.

[MaartenSCK]

The discussion can be closed since it seems to be not related to VMware.

I have tried installing a Linux distro as well as Windows W2K12R2 on the machine and in both cases, the installer fails as soon as the machine has more than 32 Gb of RAM.

With 32 Gb, VMware, windows and linux can all run fine and get installed properly, with 64, all of them fail.

I have opend a ticket with Dell for faulty hardware.

Thanks to both of you for trying to help!

Kind regards,

Maarten