ESXi

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  • 1.  ESXi 5 installation on Supermicro H8QM3-2

    Posted May 10, 2013 02:21 AM

    Have anyone installed ESXi 5 on H8QM3-2 motherboard? We have Supermicro server with that board runs Ok on 4 but thinking of upgrade. I tried it but got blank/black screen after loading of the installer finished. Not quire sure if it is still possible to install ESXi 5 on it even though it is only certified on 4. All other H8QM3-2 related posts are like 6 years old here.

    Thanks,



  • 2.  RE: ESXi 5 installation on Supermicro H8QM3-2

    Posted May 10, 2013 02:57 AM

    Have you checked the HCL - http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php to see if it is supported



  • 3.  RE: ESXi 5 installation on Supermicro H8QM3-2

    Posted May 10, 2013 03:09 AM

    It is actually AS-2041M-32R. So it is supported till 4.1 U3. Now my question is that if it is possible to upgrade to 5 (in order to upgrade server to windows 2012). I understand the hardware may not be "officially" supported. But it is really a great server and would like to find a way to extend the life of servers.



  • 4.  RE: ESXi 5 installation on Supermicro H8QM3-2

    Posted May 10, 2013 04:07 AM

    There are various community supplied drivers to get around compatability issues with NICs and RAID cards (which I wouldn't touch) but if you can't actually get past a black install screen there's probably not a lot you can do.



  • 5.  RE: ESXi 5 installation on Supermicro H8QM3-2

    Posted May 10, 2013 01:04 PM

    I am not sure what do you mean. According to this document: VMware KB: Best practices for installing ESXi 5.0 , The chipset and I/O devices are supported by ESXi5. The NIC are 82546GB which is also supported by ESXi5. I suspects it may just be some BIOS settings that have to be tweaked. Unfortunately I can't find any related information. The other part confuses me is that how could no one at VMWare knows why a certified system in 4 is no longer working in 5. I can understand it may not have any value to keep some old systems as certified. Particularly in this case is all component of the motherboard are actually supported and mentioned in the "Best practices".

    BTW, I am also waiting answers from Supermicro. I have 4 of such servers with 24 cores each. About 16 production servers and about 100 non-production servers. I guess I probably will migrate to Hyper-V since the installation works fine and it also support Windows 2012 and most Enterprise Linux OS. Well, maybe it is time for a change after 10 years' with a solo-VMWare shop.