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ESXi White Box - HP DL140
Monday, 13 October 2008 15:08
White Box is a term used to describe a hardware spec/platform that has been used outside of the Vendors recommendations.
In order to run VMware ESXi on a platform outside of the Vendors HCL (Hardware Compatibility List) I used various Whitebox resources to run ESXi on the below,
- HP Proliant DL140 G1 (2x 3Ghz Xeons / 4Gb RAM)
- Adaptec SA2420 SATA (II) 300 PCI-X 64-Bit RAID Controller
- 2 x 500Gb Seagate ST3500320AS SATA II 7200rpm Hard-Drives
Issues / Solution
On trying to install ESXi onto this platform the install produced the following error,
Unable to find a supported device to write the VMware ESX server 3i 3.5.0 image to
This was resolved by disabling ACPI in the VM Kernel
Here are the steps,
- When you boot from the installation CD press tab as soon as it starts loading.
- Then after the first .gz file name insert acpi=off then press enter.
- The install will now work but when you boot the system it will fail again.
- You also need to add this parameter to the boot.cfg file on the 2nd partition. Which you can do by booting the server from a Ubuntu Live CD which will auto detect and mount the partitions.
- Open boot.cfg and and you should see a line that says kernelopt=. Add acpi=off here.
- Then once in the VMware Infrastructure Client goto "Configuration | Advanced Settings | VMKernel | Boot" - In here disable the VMKeneral.Boot.ACPI.
Further ESX troubleshooting and how-to articles can be found here.
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