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JsyVM
Contributor
Contributor
‎07-22-2008 10:30 AM

Cannot boot ESX server

Hi,

Unless I pull the HBA cables on my host, my server will not boot into VM. It boots into one of our RIS screens. If I pull the 2 x HBA cables it boots fine.

These are 2 new IBM x3850 M2 servers and I've installed ESX 3.5.

My older x3850's boot fine.

I have disabled PXE boot in BIOS as I thought it was booting from the nic's but was most surprised when I still got the RIS screen and the nics were pulled.

I have now spent 2 days searching and making changes to the bios and the air-con has froze my brain.

any ideas please?

If you require any more info about my setup please ask and i will provide.

Thanks

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lamw
Community Manager
Community Manager
‎07-22-2008 10:37 AM

Are the HBA's on the VMware HCL? We've seen this with a HP 585 with some newer HBA's and the HBA's were in fact on the HCL. The end solution was to provision the system without the HBA's, once ESX has been installed, power off the system and put the HBA's back in. There was no good explanation and it was one of those one off systems since the hardware was repurposed.

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JsyVM
Contributor
Contributor
‎07-23-2008 02:01 AM

Thanks for your reply. i was just about to rebuild the host when I noticed that ctrl+s appears TWICE during the boot sequence. These key strokes take you to the Intel boot agent setup menu and you have to change 'boot order' to 'try local drives only'

Unfortunately I did try this yesterday but only for 1 of the Intel agents....there are 2.

Hope this helps others.

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