There are a lot of topic in VMware community forums about white boxserver hardware configuration and its compatibility with ESXi5 and ESXi4. One of the my blog visitors, Frederic, who read my post about Home LAB for vSphere 4 and 5 in a single box – post is here – asked me if I could test installation for ESxi5 and ESXi4U1 on directly on my hardware in LAB. Today morning I found few minutes to test my hardware compatibility with ESXi5 and ESXi4U1.
Hardware configuration:
http://www.vmwaremine.com/2011/12/29/lab-upgrade-finally/
Below you can find tests results:
ESXi5 – build 504890
As you can see it works on my hardware configuration, system is fully operational,
ESXi5 – build 469512
ESXi5 in build 469512 works on my hardware too. ESXi see network device, SSD disk (I didn’t try install ESXi on SSD because would destroy my Ubuntu server) I think it’s possible to install ESXi on SSD.
SSD disk is visible during installation a as well as during new storage wizard configuration
I installed Windows 2008 R2 64bit just to be sure that VM can run without extra configuration effort.
After ESXi5 and Virtual Machine with 64 bit OS test installations, I can say that my hardware is fully compatible with ESXi5 either free or full version.
UPDATE 23/05/2012
ESXi4 build 348481
Thanks to one of my blog readers (Frederic) I can announce that above hardware configuration works also with ESXi4. Before ESXi4 installation you must disable onboard LAN controller in BIOS and insert into PCI-X port additional network card. He used Intel(r) Gigabit CT Desktop adapter, link to detailed network card specification is listed in an info box.
esxi4.1 whitebox hardware
Update 17/01/2012
ESXi 5.1.0 build 799733
I have tested on above hardware configuration vSphere ESXi 5.1.0 build 799733 , see screens below:
ESXi 5.1 build 799733
[box type=”info”] Useful links
- My LAB hardware specification
- vSphere home LAB in a single box
- Remote access to LAB
- Intel Network Card supported by ESXi4
[/box]
Artur,
Thank you very much for taking the time to make the test.
Looks like I have no excuse not to buy similar hardware and make a test box ;-).
Artur,
fyi for the ESXI 4.1 installation, I installed 4.1 update 1 and got a python error complainining about a module :
“vmkctl.HostCtlException: Unable to load module /usr/lib/vmware/vmkmod/vmfs3: Failure”
I disabled the internal network card and used an intel pro 1000 desktop card and was able to install ESXi 4.1U1 free without any trouble.