Posts Tagged ‘VMWare ESXi’

None of my NICs work in ESXi 4.x!

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

I’ve been driving myself nuts for the last couple of days trying to figure out why none of the NICs that I had previously used in ESXi 3.0 and 3.5 aren’t working on my latest ESXi 4.0 installs. I checked the HCL to find that nearly all of the 10/100 chipsets have been removed from the VMware ESX HCL. Bummer. Realistically, there was is no good reason to use a 10/100/1000 card for a WAN port.

I’m sure there is a way to reload the kernel modules for the card I need but it seems like a lot of work to do that every time I need to setup an ESXi server.

So, exasperated I went to the VMware HCL to find another card that does work. This normally would not be such a big deal if the VMware ESX HCL wasn’t notoriously difficult to make any sense of.

After a few hours of trying to find an affordable PCI-E NIC on the HCL I found this site:

http://www.vm-help.com/esx40i/Hardware_support.php

It arranges everything nice and clearly. I ended up buying some bulk Broadcom NetXtreme PCI-E cards, and we’ll see how well they work in ESX 4.0.

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How to Run VMWare ESXi on PowerEdge T105

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009

edit: PowerEdge T105 is now on HCL.

How to Run VMWare ESXi 4.0 on PowerEdge T105, you ask? Simple Answer. Flash Drive. The process goes thusly.

  • Get your ESXi Image ready to go. You can download it from the VMWare website.
  • Get your trusty 1GB+ Empty Flash Drive and stick it into one of the USB Ports on the Server
  • Next, Burn the ISO to a disk and stick it in your drive.
  • Press F11 at the BIOS to select your Boot device.
  • Boot from the DVD-ROM Drive.
  • When prompted where to install VMWare ESXi choose the Flash Drive that should show up in the list.
  • When prompted to reboot, remove the installation media. On reboot enter the BIOS.
  • Switch the Hard Drive Boot Priority to put the USB drive to the top.
  • Boot VMWare ESXi as normal.

Voilà! You’re ready to rock. The PowerEdge T105 is not on the HCL so you’re unfortunately unable to run it natively because of the onboard SATA controller. You could also find a compatible SATA controller and put the drives on that, but realistically the USB Drive is not that big of a hassel for most small environments. It also means you can boot VMWare even in the event of a HDD Failure. I’ve heard that many people will actually put the flash drive inside the case that so it is not at risk of being knocked around.

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