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  • 1.  Dell Poweredge 6850 & ESXi4 - fails to boot

    Posted Aug 13, 2009 05:33 PM

    Poweredge 6850 with Perc 5/i controller, 4GB ram, 5x146GB SAS drives configured as RAID0, RAID1, RAID1. I can install ESX4i no problem to the RAID0 volume but the server fails to boot "no boot device" I did a test install of Ubuntu 9 onto the same target volume and the server boots fine with that. Any ideas ? All I can think to do is update all device firmware/bios etc

    Ian



  • 2.  RE: Dell Poweredge 6850 & ESXi4 - fails to boot

    Posted Aug 13, 2009 05:45 PM

    Are you using the Dell version of ESXi?

    Have you check also in HCL (http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility) to be sure that your system is supported?

    Andre



  • 3.  RE: Dell Poweredge 6850 & ESXi4 - fails to boot

    Posted Aug 13, 2009 05:47 PM

    Using the downloaded version from vmware site and yes the 6850 is on the HCL



  • 4.  RE: Dell Poweredge 6850 & ESXi4 - fails to boot

    Posted Aug 13, 2009 05:50 PM

    Just to be sure...

    In the boot order, is your SAS controller before the PERC one?

    Andre



  • 5.  RE: Dell Poweredge 6850 & ESXi4 - fails to boot

    Posted Aug 13, 2009 05:53 PM

    Good question, I don't see a SAS controller listed in the boot order - however I did a quick install of Ubuntu server to the same disk and it booted fine - would this not suggest that boot order is correct ?



  • 6.  RE: Dell Poweredge 6850 & ESXi4 - fails to boot

    Posted Aug 13, 2009 06:04 PM

    Not necessary cause grub could be installed on the first disk.

    Do you remember which letter have you see during Linux installation? Was /dev/sda or sdb?

    For boot order do no use F11, enter in BIOS and check which is the boot device under Hard Disk.

    Andre



  • 7.  RE: Dell Poweredge 6850 & ESXi4 - fails to boot

    Posted Aug 13, 2009 09:10 PM

    As far as I remember there were two options in there "Bios Devices" and "Perc RAID" - I played wih that order to no avail. Thanks for your responses, will have a better look tomorrow when back in the office.



  • 8.  RE: Dell Poweredge 6850 & ESXi4 - fails to boot

    Posted Aug 17, 2009 10:43 PM

    Just to close this thread, the problem turned out to be something quite simple. ESX enumerates the available disks differently than the RAID controller lists them. Once I configured the controller to boot from a different Vdisk ESXi booted no problem. Once I identified this I removed all Vdisk config and rebuilt using a single Disk Group with one physical disk to which I installed ESXi. After confirming that this booted ok I then rebuilt the remaining Disk Groups on the controller. Thanks for your help on this.

    Ian