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kevcherry
Contributor
Contributor

ESX4 on Poweredge T110?

Has anyone successfully install ESX 4 on a Dell PowerEdge T110?

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AdrianExpressUs
Contributor
Contributor

Have you checked VMware HCL to see if your Poweredge T110 is compatible with ESX4.

http://www.vmware.com/resources/guides.html

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jffowler
Contributor
Contributor

I tried installing ESX 3.5 U4 on a pretty base config T110 w/ X3440 and all seemed to go well w/ setup, but root not seen on reboot.

- Josh

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kevcherry
Contributor
Contributor

I tried to install esx 4 and it did not see my hard drives maybe a driver issue with the on board sata card.

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jffowler
Contributor
Contributor

If you're storing your VMs on NAS or SAN, then you could likely just connect a USB stick for ESXi. I intend on trying that out this weekend.

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Texiwill
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Hello,

Moved to vSphere Install forum.


Best regards,
Edward L. Haletky VMware Communities User Moderator, VMware vExpert 2009

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DSTAVERT
Immortal
Immortal

The 110 is not listed in Dell's compatibility listings. It may install, depending on processor, but as one poster indicated there will probably be issues with the sata controller. Try http://vm-help.com to see if there are work arounds. Installing to a USB stick is a good start (a supported install option). It is much easier to modify a system to work with unsupported hardware with a USB install.

-- David -- VMware Communities Moderator
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aleksey
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

I am now running ESX4i on Dell T110. If you are on current release, you won't be able to see your SATA disks connected to the on-board controller. Only option to get working would be with some remote storage (like iscsi or NAS) or getting ahold of SAS 6iR add-on controller. (A bunch cheap ones are available on fleebay). Another option is to wait for ESX4i Update 1 to come out and it will have built in drivers that will work on Dell T110.

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caude
Contributor
Contributor

I have ESXi 4 installed on the Dell T110 but in order to use anything attached to the integrated SATA controller I had to use the custom oem.tgz described here:

http://www.vm-help.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=1272

The T110 has the Intel Ibex Peak aka P55 chipset.

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DSTAVERT
Immortal
Immortal

Since you have some information others don't have can you post on how your T110 was ordered / configured.

-- David -- VMware Communities Moderator
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aleksey
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

It's default bare config. No add on controllers or anything special. Getting ESX4i installed on USB key how tos are available on the web.

What "caude" listed above should probably work as well, but I have not tried it.

I do have access to internal build systems that many do not, so at least I can give people a heads up if an upcoming release will work or not. I just can't tell you when they will come out until they come out. Sorry.

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caude
Contributor
Contributor

I started with the base T110 and upgraded the following:

  • Xeon X3460 2.8 GHz CPU

  • 4 GB (2x2GB) 1333 MHz Dual Ranked UDIMMs

After I got the system from Dell, I replaced the single 160 GB SATA drive with four Western Digital 1 TB Caviar Black SATA drives from Amazon.

I'm still trying to figure out what sort of RAID 10 solution to go with. It seems only a handful of hardware RAID cards are supported by ESXi and even fewer that will report the RAID status. I've heard some rumors about an ESXi 4.0 update and hoping for better (or at least better documented) RAID support.

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aleksey
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Thanks for the pointer to the disks. I am still trying to make a call which disk models to go for. There are just some horrible reviews for 1 or 2TB drives on newegg.

I did get a simple SAS 6iR card from ebay (same one that Dell would charge an arm and a leg for), but it will only support raid 1 or raid 0. I got the driver for it loaded, but need to get a cable to try it out with my current drives.

Caude, have you tried to run "ls" on vmfs volume connected to the default controller? For me, it seems to take a little while for the command to complete, and I wanted to see if anyone else was seeing the same issue.

thanks.

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DSTAVERT
Immortal
Immortal

That is a good platform to point people to rather than have them try to build a whitebox. I wish there was a similar piece from IBM, HP et al.

Thanks.

-- David -- VMware Communities Moderator
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caude
Contributor
Contributor

No delays that I can detect.

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aleksey
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

I completely agree. For the price (~320 bucks) with Lynnfield CPU, this is a great deal. Getting cheap raid controller, few more gigs of RAM, and a couple of big drives and you have a nice toy to run ESX on. If anyone has pointers on how to boot up / shutdown system using BMC, that would be peachy.

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caude
Contributor
Contributor

I can confirm that ESXi 4 Update 1 does install on a T110 without the need to customize oem.tgz. Unfortunately, there is still no health/status monitoring for the attached SATA drives.

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mirko_josipovic
Contributor
Contributor

hi all

@caude, are your drives in raid config or just jbod

thanks

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caude
Contributor
Contributor

It's JBOD for now. I'd like to have hardware RAID 10 but the list of supported RAID controllers is pretty small. When/if I buy one I want to make sure ESXi can monitor the RAID status and that is not documented in the hardware compatibility guide.

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trixpan
Contributor
Contributor

Hi,

Can anyone confirm if you have been able to use the VMdirectpath feature with this server? I could not find confirmation that the board chipset supports VT-d.

Thanks

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