Hi, I wanted to source one of the more modern Gigabyte Boards for ESX 4i host (already running one host successfully on GA-M55plus-S3G board) and wasn't sure how to determine whether ESX would see SATA drives OK (without having to use a USB drive and external storage) - for example the storage chipset for the GA-880GMA-UD2H is as shown below ?


South Bridge:

1.5 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors 6 supporting up to 5 SATA 6Gb/s devices
2.1 x eSATA 6Gb/s connectors on the back panel supporting up to 1 SATA 6Gb/s device
3.Support for SATA RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 10, and JBOD
JMicron JMB368 chip:

1.1 x IDE connector supporting ATA-133/100/66/33 and up to 2 IDE devices

Generally you want to find something with an Intel ICH or nVidia MCP controller.

Thanks - much appreciated

Actually, a couple more things.

I need to replace my original VMware host (as it's a bit under gunned) & wondered whether I would have issues migrating the VM's onto new host if I was going from AMD to INTEL CPU. (the storage controller woould probably be also changing from NVidia MCP to Intel ICH)

Am I right in assuming that Modern AMD boards with Nvidia MCP MCP controllers are a little scarce ?

The storage controller won't matter as the VM won't see that. For CPU changes you wouldn't be able to perform a live migration, but in general you could shut it down and then migrate the VM to AMD to Intel. Do you run Windows or Linux VMs?

OK might well give Intel a go - thanks.

I'm using mostly Windows (server 2003 & 8) but have one Red Hat VM as well.

By the way, do most Broadcom NIC's work with ESX 4i ?

You should be fine with the Windows VM and probably OK with Linux. If the kernel was compiled in a specific way it may fail to start up.

For Broadcom NICs generally a 57xx will work fine.

Thanks Dave

Hi Having decided to go down the AMD route, I chose the ASUS M4N75TD board with the NVidia MCP (nForce 750a SLI) but having all sorts of difficulties with the ESXi (4 or 4.1) install. Unless I supply a USB flash drive, ESX cannot see a local drive on which to install (the SATA drives are not recognised) and won't proceed with the install. Even with the USB drive, the install halts when loading all sorts of modules like USB, ehci-hcd, forcedeth and the subsequent install is not properley recognised by VCentre

What sort of keyboard are you using?