Hello,
I have had a client on VMware workstation 2x for quite a few years. I have fought with all the instabilities that go with that product. We are about ready to start a new project to upgrade an old Email server to Zimbra. In order to do that and keep the initial costs down I suggested to the client that we upgrade their old Workstation 2x to ESXI 5.1.
I took the server home, built an ESXI 5.1 white box on an Lenovo ThinkCentre workstation. Converted the virutal machines over to 5.1. After that I started trying to upgrade the real server over to ESX 5.1.
The hardware is Asus P5K-WS with 8 GIG of ram
The processor is an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU E7200 @ 2.53Ghz
MegaRAID Sata 300-8x Controller with two RAID 5 drives.
-> 1 at 1.4 TB
-> 1 at 1.9 TB
After some trial and error I pretty much find that this hardware WILL NOT work with ESXI 5.1. When the install CD boots, I see the message "Relocating Modules", then the screen clears and the server just locks up.
Not detoured by this, I did lots of research and pretty much determined that this hardware should work pretty well on ESXI 4.1 U3. At least I have seen people make it work.
I managed to get the server part to install, and get it so that it will keep ACPI=OFF in boot.cfg (otherwise it will lock up with a PSOD when it initializes the ACPI driver).
Server seems to be running fine, that is until I install the MegaRAID controller. It loads the MegaRAID_MBOX driver. and now it appears that ESXI is really unstable. This Hardware is in the HCL (the MegaRAID that is). and I have read that people have gotten this to work.
If I bring the server out of maintenance mode I will see this error from the client: "Call "PropertyCollector.RetrieveContents" for object "ha-property-collector" on ESXi "esxi-01" failed."
If I look at the logs I will see several entries like this:
0:06:15:59:059 cpu0:5785)Vol3: 1668: Could not open device 't10.ATA_____Hitachi_HDS721075CLA332_______________________JP2721HP00D6RA:8' for probing: Permission denied
There are also several entries like this:
0:09:11:40:40.813 cpu0:4151)FS3: 8617 Long VMFS3 rsv time on 'DS-ESXI-02' (held for 5817 msecs). # R: 1, # W: 1 bytesXfr: 2 sectors
This started happening right after I added the LSI card as a datastore.
BTW my requests seem to complete, but after a really long time. For example, I will bring the ESXI server out of maintenance mode, and I will get the above error from the client. But if I wait I will see that the server did indeed enter normal run mode.
To me this looks like some kind of driver issue with the MegaRAID 300-8X controller.
I will continue researching the problem and IF I find an answer I will post it. As of now I have about 4 hours research into this problem and I am chasing my tail if you know what I mean.
Thanks for your help.
Sideband Samurai.