VMware Cloud Community
rmrobert
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

What hardware do you most wish ESX supported?

I'm interested in hearing what hardware you have that ESX doesn't support.

I'm mostly interested in NIC controllers users would like ESX support for and also SCSI/SAS controllers, but feel free to mention anything else.

The more information you can give the better, such as linux module name and/or PCI VendorID and DeviceID (output of lspci -nn on linux or ESX)

I'll go first:

04:00.0 Ethernet controller : Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8053 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 22)

In Linux this is the "sky2" driver.

After we get some responses, I may put up a poll where users can vote for which devices they want support for most, but first I must establish which entries to put in the poll. Feel free to mention a device multiple times- we want get a feel for which devices to prioritize based on usage, not just a list of every possible unsupported hardware.

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Texiwill
Leadership
Leadership

Hello,

Some form of higher end laptop support would be nice as well.....


Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education. CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354, As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

--
Edward L. Haletky
vExpert XIV: 2009-2023,
VMTN Community Moderator
vSphere Upgrade Saga: https://www.astroarch.com/blogs
GitHub Repo: https://github.com/Texiwill
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azn2kew
Champion
Champion

My wish list for ESX supported is every laptop I've bought like Sony VAIO and Dell XPS M1710 installed neither on bare metal or Workstation 6.0 methods and should work with ESX 3.5 as well. That doesn't seems to happen for the laptops out there but its a wish list Smiley Happy Anyways, for ESX and home test lab, should have more choices for general users with minimal hardwares such as disk controllers, nics, cpu.

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!! Regards, Stefan Nguyen VMware vExpert 2009 iGeek Systems Inc. VMware vExpert, VCP 3 & 4, VSP, VTSP, CCA, CCEA, CCNA, MCSA, EMCSE, EMCISA
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Dave_Mishchenko
Immortal
Immortal

I'd like to see support for the RAID functions found in Intel ICH controllers and nVidia MCP controllers that ESX currently will recognize as JBOD but not when configured as RAID.

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tuckrman
Contributor
Contributor

I would like to see support for RocketRAID controllers. Myself I have a RocketRaid 2220. Cheers

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amarnathreddy19
Contributor
Contributor

Hi,

You can find more Hardware Compatibility details here

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epping
Expert
Expert

I have a few AS400s not doing much Smiley Happy seriously a top end laptop would be good

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rpartmann
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Hello,

would like to see 3ware SATA Controllers on the HCL.

kind regards,

Reinhard.






ps: Award points if you find answers helpful. Thanks.

ps: Award points if you find answers helpful. Thanks.
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Ken_Cline
Champion
Champion

I'll second the 3ware/AMCC controllers...

I'd also like to post an appeal that VMware not try to be the next Microsoft when it comes to supporting everything out there. There are advantages to broad system and peripheral support - but I feel that the disadvantages far outweigh them. Every new device that needs a new driver is an opportunity for a (potentially serious) "undocumented feature". The larger the support matrix, the larger the interaction potential, and the more difficult (even impossible) it becomes to thoroughly test all combinations. I would much rather see ESX remain an "enterprise" product with Gibraltar-like stability. The only way to achieve that objective is to keep the complexity as low as possible so that comprehensive testing is at least approachable.

I'm definitely willing to sacrifice peripheral diversity in favor of overall platform stability!

Ken Cline

Technical Director, Virtualization

Wells Landers

VMware Communities User Moderator

Ken Cline VMware vExpert 2009 VMware Communities User Moderator Blogging at: http://KensVirtualReality.wordpress.com/
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khughes
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

I'm definitely willing to sacrifice peripheral diversity in favor of overall platform stability!

As much as I would love to build an ESX box out of some high end desktop parts, I completely agree with Ken.

  • Kyle

-- Kyle "RParker wrote: I guess I was wrong, everything CAN be virtualized "
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RDPetruska
Leadership
Leadership

USB devices directly - without having to spend lots of money and take up more physical space by using a USB-over-Ethernet device.

Virtual IDE hard disks - to be able to support any guest OS out there without having to worry about if there was a particular SCSI adapter driver for that guest. With the push for VDI, this is critical, as practically no desktop PC on the market has SCSI hard disks.

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dominic7
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

I wish the HCL for ESXi would be expanded to cover 'slightly old' servers like the DL585 G1.

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Dave_Mishchenko
Immortal
Immortal

See here if you haven't seen this already - http://www.3ware.com/KB/article.aspx?id=14922.

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rpartmann
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Hi,

thanks.

kind regards,

Reinhard

ps: Award points if you find answers helpful. Thanks.

ps: Award points if you find answers helpful. Thanks.
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mreferre
Champion
Champion

Ken is spot on (as usual).

I would rather too see ESX remaining a very limited platforms in terms of hardware support flexibility ...... but with premium stability and robustness. That's why I am concerned too about opening up the storage subsystem to third parties etc etc.

I would be concerned about being able to support everything from an enterprise SAN all the way to a USB Joystick .......... a Datacenter OS (like VI3) doesn't need to run databases as well as flight simulators ...... otherwise we all know how these things end up..... I am sure we all do.... Someone already went down this path as it was mentioned ....

Massimo.

Massimo Re Ferre' VMware vCloud Architect twitter.com/mreferre www.it20.info
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mikepodoherty
Expert
Expert

I have VMware server on my laptop and desktop at home - will be installing it on an old Dell tower server as well.

That being said, I would prefer to be able to install ESX on a laptop or high end desktop -my wife would strangle me if I purchased the server hardware I need for a lab.

I agree with the folks who say you don't need to support everything - I wouldn't mind if the USB functionality was minimal or firewire or similar technology but I do need a way to build a lab running ESX (VI) directly as the management is different from server.

Thanks.

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mreferre
Champion
Champion

Mike,

I would't personally "bastardize" the ESX code to make it more flexible as far as target platforms are concerned just for the sake of being able to install it at home. I would rather like to see a documented / official way to load (with scaled down functionalities) ESX on top of a hosted platform for those that want to familiarize with its interfaces / management. This way you can keep the supported hw complexity minimal instead of throwing in tons of drivers to support the multitude of devices found on non-enterprise servers.

Just my opinion.....

Massimo.

Massimo Re Ferre' VMware vCloud Architect twitter.com/mreferre www.it20.info
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rmrobert
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

If you just want to play around with the commands, etc, you can load ESX inside a workstation VM. If you want to run VMs, you will need certain hardware, and may have to change some undocumented settings in the ./vmx

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Ken_Cline
Champion
Champion

If you just want to play around with the commands, etc, you can load ESX inside a workstation VM. If you want to run VMs, you will need certain hardware, and may have to change some undocumented settings in the ./vmx

Exactly. I would much prefer to see a fully documented (not supported) procedure for getting ESX working (including running virtual machines - even if a restricted set of Guest OS's) inside Player/Server (since they are free) or Workstation (since it's cheap) than to see it directly supporting a wide range of HW. Using the abstraction capabilities of a hosted virtualization layer allows you to run ESX on just about any box while maintaining a "standardized" platform. Ideally, add ESX as a recognized guest OS type for the hosted platforms so that you don't have to muck with the .vmx file (hint, hint...)

Ken Cline

Technical Director, Virtualization

Wells Landers

VMware Communities User Moderator

Ken Cline VMware vExpert 2009 VMware Communities User Moderator Blogging at: http://KensVirtualReality.wordpress.com/
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Ken_Cline
Champion
Champion

Hey Massimo! Glad to see you around. How's life as a Dad - you getting enough sleep? Smiley Wink

Ken Cline

Technical Director, Virtualization

Wells Landers

VMware Communities User Moderator

Ken Cline VMware vExpert 2009 VMware Communities User Moderator Blogging at: http://KensVirtualReality.wordpress.com/
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