VMware ESXi 3.5 on DL 180 G5

[itiks.ru]

Hi all.

See link, http://www.vmware.com/products/esxi/uses.html
VMware ESXi support ProLiant DL380 G5.

ProLiant DL180 G5 support VMware ESXi?

Who started VMware ESXi on DL180 G5 ?

[Peter Turek]

I'm looking for the same thing: I have tried to install VMWare ESXi3_5 on a DL180 G5 without success. The purple screen of death is coming up shortly after successful boot.

I updated bios to the latest but haven't done anything else. 4GB original HP RAM, a single Intel E5430 CPU, Smart Array p400 array controller and 4 SAS/SATA drives are installed.

any ideas?

thanks

[MHolm]

We have the same crashing as well with the DL180 G5. We have two that we have had up, but were running IO testing on a single VM on each. They both got the PSOD with something about CPU not responding. We have dual quad cores and 4 SAS drives using both the integrated p200 and and an adaptec 54xx (on ESX list) in the 2nd system. Would be great to find some answers.

[SergueiF]

I have almost the same result with my 180G5.
At beginning of case I successfully load ESXi3.5u2 (ESX Server 3i version 3.5 Update 2 Installable | 13 AUG 2008 | Build 110271 ) from USB and it worked at least 1 hour without virtual machines. But it did not see embedded SATA Raid. So I have updated BIOS (Systems ROMPaq Firmware Upgrade for HP ProLiant DL180 G5 Servers ) from version dated 2008.04.28 to 2008.08.20.
After this update ESXi can not boot (The purple screen of death).
W2k3x64 are booting without problem.

if anybody would try to downgrade BIOS to 2008.04.28 version, please let know about results.

[Adrian Clint]

Well Vmware do not say its supported and HP do not say either.
http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/cache/505363-0-0-0-121.html

[itiks.ru]

Hi, all.

All thanks for answers.

I start test install VMware ESXi 3.5 on my DL 180 G5 and I will see result, work or not work :-)

[itiks.ru]

All thanks for answers.

[KORMANN]

" Well Vmware do not say its supported and HP do not say either."

Doesn't mean it will not work. Have a look at vmware community white book (http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3.5/Whiteboxes_SATA_Controllers_for_ESX_3.5_3i.htm)

I also made ESXi working on ML150G5.

Hope this help

[MHolm]

Indeed. I found someone that has it running correctly. It does seem to be CPU related. They are running fine on a DL180 G5, but with Dual E5405 (quad 2.0) CPU's instead of the dual E5420 (quad 2.5) CPU's we have. We are testing with a E5405 we got from another site to see if that is the key. We also got a rumor out of HP tech support. . .something about there being a board design issue that doesn't provide enough power to the CPU's. Strange thing is that Windows and Linux work without the same issues.

[MHolm]

We did finally get these to work. We found we needed to disable the first onboard SATA/IDE controller to be able to consistently install. We also discovered that all our PSOD's stopped when we disconnected the PS2 keyboard and mouse.