Supermicro blade server is not VMWare compatible hardware?

[Dale_Mahalko]

I am using the following SuperMicro blade server in a datacenter. Or rather, I am a customer/tenant using one of the X9SRD-F blades.

Supermicro | Products | SuperServer | MicroCloud | 5037MR-H8TRF

Supermicro | Products | Motherboards | Xeon® Boards | X9SRD-F

Apparently this hardware WAS supported for VMWare 5.0 Release 1, but not for any newer versions.

The hardware is still being sold new by SuperMicro, and I have learned it costs around $5,000 just for the chassis, power supplies, and motherboards, without including any CPUs, memory, or drives. The blades have four memory slots and can have up to 128 gig, or 4x32gig ECC sticks, plus a low-profile PCIE x8 slot per blade.

So this is "hardcore datacenter" equipment for super dense environments. It isn't some cheap consumer toy motherboard from some no-name off-brand manufacturer. Yet it is not supported with any newer versions of VMWare?

Someone please explain.

[daphnissov]

What would you like explained? VMware does not test and certify all hardware from everyone for every single release. This Supermicro hardware is older stuff if it was around for 5.0 and has been superseded by other, newer and better hardware. Supermicro isn't being picked on unfairly here--lots of hardware from other vendors that is of similar age isn't certified for the newest version.

[Magneet]

The certification part is done by the vendor so it's Supermicro not wanting to certify it for newer ESXi versions. See VMware’s hardware compatibility list - Virtualization Pro  for some more clarification on this.