Hey, I am trying to set up esxi 5.0 on a Supermicro 1U with an X6DHR-3G2 motherboard in it and I have 4 80 Gig sata drives in it. These drives are connected to the onboard adaptec raid controler and have been set up as raid 0, 1, 10, and jbod. In all instances I am able to get to the portion of the install where it lists the drives and nothing shows on the screen. I would like to be able to run these as raid 10 and am wondering if there is a way to add the correct raid drivers during the install like with windows, or if there is a way to slipstream them into the install disk to make vsphere work. I am hoping not to have to invest in a new raid card as I have 12 of these servers and new cards for them would be extremely expensive. The other question I have is this, Is raid even needed with vsphere when you are running several servers in a cluster? Does Vsphere have its own redundancy built in? Anyway, if you havn't already guessed, this is my first adventure with VMware or any virtualization. So, my last question if no to all the others is what would you recommend as an alternative to Vmware that will accomplish the same goals? Goals are to run several servers in cluster as one large virtualization platform with low software overhead for the purpose of deploying virtual machines to run several different kinds of tasks. Thanks for any responses.
vsphere is not the virtualization engine. Esxi is. Vsphere is the management tool to manage multiple esxi hosts and bring together the features like vmotion. vSphere has a hardware compatibility list that you should reference to make sure everything you use is on the list. http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php
exsi can be used for free, but vsphere can't. Is price an issue? Vmware is a great product, but very expensive.
For alternatives, look at Openstack or KVM. I have Vmware, Xen, Proxmox, and KVM openstack. All are great tools
I am sorry, I misspoke myself. I am having the problems with the ESXI, not the vsphere. The price is not an issue as it has already been purchased. I lucked out in that a local company was going out of business and I was able to purchase allot of their stuff for fairly cheap including software and licenses. The hardware I have is not on the compatibility list. Does this mean it will never work with said hardware, or does it mean I would have to load something to make it work? Thank you for the reply and I will definately look into the other softwares you mentioned.
I have tried xenserver and watched all the videos, but it gives me an error while in setup claiming the virtualization is not turned on in the bios. I have gone through the bios and found nothing on virtualization, so now my question is : is this something that has to come built into the motherboard or is this something that can be added to the system later as an aftermarket upgrade?
The Bios Error may refer to the VT engine not being enabled. Look for VT in the Bios for that one.
VMware ESXi on hardware that isn't on the HCL is a hit or miss. I've never run VM on anything that wasn't on HCL. You should probably contact VMware support to triple check.
If VMware won't work for you, have a look at ProxMox instead. That will run on almost anything, and has alot of the features from VMware even if it lacks the polish.
We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.