Installation of ESXi 4 Fails - Failed to load lvmdriver

[andyhd]

Hi,

I am trying to setup a system at home to mirror the vm config at work (vsphere 4 essentials plus). At work all is fine.

At home installation is failing on a Asus P5K-E/wifi motherboard, On board storage is ICH9, onboard NIC is Marvell Gigabit.

Added in Intel Pro 100/S

Get a "Failed to load lvmdriver" error. Is this error specific to a network issue or could it be some other hardware that's not supported?

Hope you can advise

Andy

[William Lam]

Take a look at the following threads, looks like you might have an unsupported NIC

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William Lam

VMware vExpert 2009

VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at:

VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators

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[jkotze]

Hi Andy,

Did you manage to solve your problem? I have the same Asus P5K-E/wifi motherboard and get the same error when trying to install ESXi 4.

I've disabled the onboard NIC, SATA RAID and Soundcard and installed an Intel Pro/1000GT PCI NIC and an Adaptec AAR-2410SA SATA RAID controller, but can only get ESXi 3.5 Update 4 to install on this box without any problems but no luck with ESXi 4.

William, I get an authentication error trying to open this link: , and the other topic: is basically telling me to install the Intel NIC that I already have installed, so I'm no closer to solving it either.

Does anyone else have any ideas on this or got it working on the Asus P5K series motherboards?

Thanks

Jacques

[jkotze]

Problem solved. I tried installing ESXi 4 while I still had an Intel Pro/100?? NIC installed (not sure on the exact model, it is Dell branded with an Intel chipset and only 10/100). My Intel Pro/1000GT card only arrived after lunch and since ESXi 3.5 was already installed and running fine with the Intel Pro 10/100 from earlier this morning, I just removed the 10/100 NIC and installed the new Pro/1000GT and ESXi 3.5 booted fine and even kept the same Static IP address.

I've now re-installed ESXi 4 with the new Intel Pro/1000GT NIC and this time around is installed without any errors... Unfortunately I'm still unable to connect to my server with the VMware vSphere Client (web browser connects fine to the server's IP address), I get an clients.xml error, but will look into thata bit later. At least the correct NIC solved the installation errors.

This is the card that I got: Intel PRO/1000 GT PCI Desktop Adapter which I actually ordered for ESXi 3.5.

Hope this helps and sorry for the slightly inaccurate post earlier.

Regards

Jacques

[Scissor]

Unfortunately I'm still unable to connect to my server with the VMware vSphere Client (web browser connects fine to the server's IP address), I get an clients.xml error, but will look into thata bit later.

My guess is that you're running Win7. The new vSphere client doesn't work under Win7 yet.

[jkotze]

That is correct, I'm running Windows 7 RC 64-bit and fortunately there is a temporary fix as documented here:

I knew it wasn't a big issue when the vSphere client installed and connected fine from my XP 64-bit system, I just needed some time to search the forums and eventually found and applied the fix late last night. :smileyhappy: