Hi,

I spent the all day on ESXi 4.0 installation. No success.

I will try to explain my concern shortly, and I hope someone could help me.

About my HW :

Blade from SuperMicro, model SBI-7126T-S6
You can find full spec here : http://212.83.253.36/servers/blade/modu ... 26t-s6.cfm

As far as I can see, it is not officially supported by VMware.

The main components which may require additional drivers, I guess, are :

NIC :: Intel 82576 Gigabit Ethernet Controller

VendorID : 8086 - DeviceID : 10e7

SAS :: LSI Logic SAS2008 PCI-Express Fusion-MPT SAS-2

VendorID : 1000 - Device ID : 0072

For NIC, it seems there is VMware support for ESXi (see http://downloads.vmware.com/d/details/e ... R0QGpidGR3), but no way to add drivers into ESXi installation CD. You can only add drivers to an already installed and running ESXi server... Or did I get it wrong ?

Since the installation failed with the error message 'Failed to load lvmdriver', and because according to VMware, this is due to missing drivers for NIC, I tried to add drivers into an ISO of ESXi installation. Following the many howto on the web.
I even found drivers for this NIC on this blog : http://the-jer.spaces.live.com/blog/cns ... !289.entry

No, it seems the installation process is going a step further. But stop with a nice PSOD, telling there is no space left on disk... I guess now I am facing an issue with SAS controller.

Once again, it seems the SAS is supported by VMware ( see http://www.vmware.com/resources/compati ... e_id=13971 ).
But since it doesnt work, I'd like to add manually drivers into ISO CD.

But I don't know how to compile drivers in order to include them in the ISO CD (how to create the *.o files... ? ).

So, if someone has a great idea...

As for me, I will try to disable HDD on this blade, in order to install ESXi on USB key. So that I have a running ESXi server on this host, then install the drivers for SAS as provided by VMware... and I will see then what I could pick out from there and add to ESXi CD installation...

Thank you in advance for your help

For the NIC you would want to create an oem.tgz (see the home page) and then you can use this script to add it to the install media - viewtopic.php?f=12&t=4.

When in the install process do you get the PSOD (i.e. is it after you select the HD to use and it starts to install to HD)?

Thank you for answer.
I knew about the script to create ISO ; but when I used it, I had always the same error message. Something like : "No oem.tgz file has been found on original ISO CD". So no way to create CD with this tool.
This is why I did it manually.

Anyhow, this morning I give it a second try, and it ... worked ! Don't ask me why... :.
Now, I still have the same error, but I think I was wrong when I said the PSOD was because of SAS controller... Instead I think it is still because of NIC drivers.

I attach a copy of PSOD.

Now, you say I should have a look to the home page to know how to create oem.tgz. But, according to me, the main info is lacking : how to create the *.o driver files ???
I mean, if I can find the source files for the drivers, what do I need to compile them ? On which platform ? Will it work if I compile on RHEL, for instance ? Or do I have to try some trick to install a compiler on one of my running ESXi servers and try to compile from there ? Any clue ?

Thanks.

ESXi and ESX have a Linux driver compatability mode, but the vmkernel isn't Linux so you can't use generic Linux drivers. You have to compile them specifically for ESX(i) and here's a guide on that - http://www.kernelcrash.com/blog/using-a ... 009/08/22/.

The PSOD image doesn't have the top part - could you post that?

Hello Ra0,
have you finally made your LSI SAS2008 HBA working in your ESX? We want to use the same card to connect SAS LTO5 tape drive to one of the VMs and want to make sure DirectPath would work.
Thank you.

Hi Nikolini

since then, VMware has released new versions of this product. Though I know I am not running the latest one, I am glad to tell you that I currently have 5 of this kind of Supermicro devices, successfully running ESXi 4.0 update 2 x64

Install is running well, without any tweak or trick.
And servers are stable.

Wish you the best