Supermico X7DVL-E puzzling Sata issues
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zeropegleg Member |
Here\'s my current configuration; SuperMicro - X7DVL-E (2 x socket 771 64bit Xeon (quad or dual)MB) FSB speed of 1333Mhz/1067 Mhz / 667Mhz - ATX form factor - ACPI - 6 x onboard SATA ports (supports RAID 0,1,5,10) - 2 x Gbit Lan ports-supported by ESB2 south bridge (works 1st time under ESXi!) - 1 x EIDE UltraDMA / 100 bus master I/F. - 1 x floppy (I\'m not using this.) - 6 x USB - not using headers, just 2 x onboard on back of system board. - ATI 16MB ES1000 Graphics Controller - Super I/O: Winbond W83627HF - loaded w/ 1 x Dual-Xeon 2GHz cpu in socket location #0 - 2 GB (2 x 1GB) RAM ECC registered memory. - EIDE DVD - Bios - 8Mb Phoenix w/ DMI 2.3, ACPI 1.0, PnP, USB kb support, HW Bios virus protection and SMBios 2.3 - I\'ve been puzzled by this motherboards refusal to work correctly for SATA control for some time now and I\'m about at wits end. The motherboard has a Phoenix Bios (perhaps we should be tracking versions??) which does contain most of the same settings I\'ve used successfully on other whiteboxes - i.e.: - Sata Controller Mode - Enhanced - Sata Raid Mode - Disabled - Sata AHCI Mode - Disabled And indeed, this motherboard worked fine the first time I loaded it up w/ a fresh Samsung 1TB hard drive - HD103UJ. However, I had formatted the drive correctly in another machine using Gparted ISO as ESX3. Once I did this, I transferred the drive over to the machine and then booted up ESXi 3.5. Machine came up fine and I was then able to connect to it successfully using the VMWare Infrastructure Client on my windows box. Next, it showed up as a new datastore and I was then able to format it correctly for my system. walaa, it\'s there. I then went to the ESXi box\'s console and did a proper F2 shutdown. I added 2 x more GB of ECC registered memory (borrowed from an exact clone of this system - yes, i have 2 systems w/ the same configs  And then restarted the machine. The machine now hangs during boot of the ESXi Server at this point. "Starting VMware ESX Server 3i: Loading module ata_piix ... Starting config Script" I then took the drive out of this system and loaded it into a completely different system - an E-machine w/ centron CPU 1.6ghz box running ESXi 3.5 as well. This e-machine recognized the HD and I was able to format it using this box. Then I tried to transfer the fully formatted VMSf drive back to the Supermicro box. the ESXi boot still hangs at the same place.???? Not sure what to try next. any help would be greatly welcome!!! |
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| Posts: 3 Country:  Unknown Date: 02-01-2009 15:07 |
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Replys's
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zeropegleg Member |
2nd attempt w/ limited success. I\'ve now gone back to the Bios and put the SATA Control Mode back to - "Compatible" mode and left the 2ndary setting to "Serial ATA" mode as opposed to "Auto". This allows the ESXi server to boot up correctly. When launching VMWare Infrastructure Client and pointing to my ESXi Supermicro box, I get into the Host ok, but the host reports that there is no persistent datastore. Next, In the Host screen I navigate to (Configuration > Storage > Add Storage...) the wizard starts correctly but doesn\'t see my storage device (looking for 1tb samsung). So, then i try the add a new datastore wizard navigating to (Configuration > "Click here to create a datastore" ) - noting!!! No datastore available. crap. next, i\'m going to set the 2ndary function to "Auto" instead of "Serial ATA" mode and see if that works. |
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Posts: 3 Country: Unknown Date: 02-01-2009 16:36 |
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