ESXi Blues?

[Revilogy]

Hi guys, I am a 17 y/o who is currently working with my school's IT techs with a program my school does.

 

Anyway, I have been having problems installing ESXi on a test computer to test out how the school might do virtualisation in the future. My test machine is an old HP dc5750, and for whatever reason the ESXi installer cannot detect any hard drive I connect to it.

 

Does a hard drive need to be formatted in any way for ESXi (5.1) to detect it, or do I need a new test machine?

 

Thanks!

[dwhyte85]

Have you tried changing the mode from AHCI to IDE in the BIOS just yet? Not particularly helpful for why it's happening, but seen similar when trying to install on test machines.

[synaesthesia]

In a nutshell ESXi doesn't like the majority of software RAID controllers or onboard RAID controllers; it expects a server. As above, changing to IDE mode may help in this instance but it may be easier to get hold of a cheap raid card, or perhaps using virtualbox or similar on your PC instead.

[Revilogy]

I believe I did so, but I don't have access to the machine till Monday so I will have to have a look. Thanks!

[Revilogy]

Ah ok, I will need to look into that... Maybe using hyper-v on win server 2012 could be an idea...?

[jtoland]

What type of hdds are you using I have had problems with certain hdds

[Revilogy]

I know they are SATA ones, not entirely sure on make, most likely Seagate...

[jtoland]

Ok ours are seagate on our servers y don't you try an updated version of esxi to see if that does anything

[Revilogy]

I tried, I did have the version wrong actually... I tired 5.5, maybe a roll back to 5.1 might detect older hardware.

[jtoland]

Have you tried setting the bios to default selling that may work

[Revilogy]

Yep I did, it was one of the first things I tried. One question I may ask on a different post is Hyper-V vs. ESXi, but I would like to get this going... There is no RAID either, just one HD. Really scratching my head. :-(

[Arthur]

It might be possible to create a custom ESXi ISO with support for the SATA controller in your HP PC.

 

www.v-front.de/2013/11/how-to-make-your-unsupported-sata-ahci.html

[Revilogy]

Looks like what I need, however, how do I get to the shell? :/

[Arthur]

how do I get to the shell?

F2 in the Direct Console.

 

Using ESXi Shell in ESXi 5.x « VMware KB

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=3Hl1s7JcX4M

Edited November 8, 2014 by Arthur

[Revilogy]

Ah, I can't actually install ESXi with it not being able to detect my hard drive for installation.

[Arthur]

Install ESXi to a USB flash drive?

[Revilogy]

I thought about it, I was hoping for an internal solution, but if I can get it going it would be a start. I don't have access until at least Monday, so I will keep you updated, if anyone has any ideas though please let me know. :-)

[Chris_]

Install ESXi to a USB flash drive?

 

Quick Google for ESXi on a DC5750 brought up this article amongst various others: VIRTUALIZATION | Run ESXI 4.1 on HP Compaq dc5750 Workstation | kabheap

[Revilogy]

Ah thanks Chris, I'll look into this when I can! This looks like it will work!