August 23rd, 2008 
Kiwi Si 
Well, I finally succumbed to the lure of buying an ML110 G5 and ML115 G5 for my home server test lab. At a sub £100 price each they offer great value for money – just add memory, which is currently going for £50-£60 for 2 x 2GB DDR2 800 DIMM’s. They will join may pair of ML110 G4’s that I currently run VMware ESX 3.5 on in my lab.
There have been some great conversations between people on this blog relaying their experiences (good and bad) on running the recently released version of VMware ESX 3i, 3.5 on their ML110 or ML115 G5’s.
See my other blog articles comments here, here and also here for more details.
My first venture with my new ML110 server is to see whether I experience any problems or gotchas when installing ESX 3i (3.5).
So, the best place to start is to unpack the server.
The packaging as you’d expect is more than adequate with the server itself being supported by foam ends and covered in protective plastic. There is also a basic keyboard and old style roller ball mouse included.
I remember the first time I saw an ML110 I was very surprised about how small it actually is. It is approximately the size of a small desktop PC.
The casing and front of this G5 server is the same as its G4 predecessor.
There are also the usual two USB2 ports on the front.
2 x PS2 keyboard/mouse connections, 1 x serial, 1 x analogue monitor port, 1 x NC105i 1Gb network and 4 USB 2 ports can be found on the back.
The side panel is easily removed after loosening a single plastic turn screw on the rear.
The CPU in my particular model of G5 is an Intel XEON 3065 (dual core)which runs at 2.33GHz.
As well as a different network and storage controller chipset to the ML110 G4 the ML110G5 sports a SATA CD/DVD writer as opposed to an IDE version. The hard disk is also larger at 250GB as opposed to 160GB. There are free hard disk bays to add extra hard disks and 3 spare SATA 150 ports on the motherboard to connect them into.
There are four memory slots in total. The ML110 G5 can take up to 8GB of PC2-6400 unbuffered DDR2 ECC 800MHz memory.
The server came with a single 1GB DIMM though this is obviously not enough if you want to use it as a virtualisation host.
The memory can be interleaved with a minimum of 2 matching DIMMS.
I am replacing the single DIMM that came with the server with a pair of 2GB OCZ GOLD Edition PC2-6400 unbuffered 800MHz DIMMS.
I bought these for £63 from the YoYoTech store just off of Tottenham Court Road in central London. I have used these and the Corsair XMS2 DIMMS in my ML110 G4’s and they work just fine.
It’s worth checking out online vendors such as OverClockers.co.uk who have some very good deals on memory.
There are three PCIe (x1, x1, x8) and one PCI (32 bit) expansion ports.
Here is a real point of interest!
On the motherboard there is an internal USB port. As discussed by ‘Fungus’ and ‘Loz’ on my posting here, this port can be potentially be used to install ESXi or have it run from there.
I will give this a go sometime soon and will post my findings as booting from flash and then using the internal drive formatted with VMFS is appealing.
Now onto the ESX 3i install. The version of ESX 3i I am installing is 3.5.0 build 110271.
After inserting the ESX 3i installation CD into the drive and powering the server on you are greeted with a HP Proliant splash screen with three menu options.
At this stage all of the BIOS settings are at the ‘out of box’ defaults.
Once the ESX 3i build CD spins up and starts to load you are presented with the following screen.
Press ‘Enter’ to install (below).
Agree to the EULA
You are then presented with the following failure screen (below). As you can see the problem is that ESX 3i is unable to see any supported device (ie: hard disk, flash drive) to install itself on to.
From this screen the only option is to reboot.
Although this looks like it could be quite a problem it is in fact quite simple to resolve.
Reboot the server and enter into its BIOS settings by pressing F10 (ROM Based Setup).
This is the main BIOS screen. My BIOS version is 0150624 (07/03/08). From the drop down menus along the top select ‘Advanced’ and then ‘Advanced Chipset Control’.
Change the ‘Native Mode Operation’ from the default setting of ‘Auto’ to ‘Serial ATA’ (below).
Next, from the ‘Advanced’ drop down menu select ‘Advanced Processor Options’ and ‘Enable’ the ‘Intel Virtualization Technology (VT)’ setting.
Save these settings and exit the BIOS.
Restart the server with the ESX 3i installation CD still in the CD/DVD drive.
Run through the install process as previously described above though this time you will find that you no longer get the error message about the lack of any supported storage devices being available for the install.
Instead you get presented with a screen displaying the installed hard disk. In my case this is still the single 250GB SATA hard disk that came with the server.
Press ‘Enter’ to continue…
… and then ‘F11′ to confirm the install.
Wait a few minutes whilst the ESX 3i installer installs 3i on to the SATA hard disk.
Once you get the install successful screen press ‘Enter’ to reboot once last time.
Upon rebooting your new ESX 3i installation will be up and happily running on your HP Proliant ML110 G5.
Now press ‘F2′ to assign a static IP address, name, etc to the 3i installation.
When you connect to it using the Infrastructure Client it will show up as follows (see below -click the image to enlarge), complete with an VMFS disk that you can now add/install VMs onto.
I hope you find this posting helpful. I will be getting the ML115 G5 up and running in the next week or so. I’m always interested to hear from others with their experiences in running ESX on an ML110/ML115 or similar.
Related posts:
- Installing and Running VMware vSphere (ESX 4.0) on your lab HP Proliant ML110 or ML115. With the release of VMware’s vSphere and ESX 4.0...
- HP Proliant ML110 G5 – VT or not VT? That is the question… (When wanting to run a Hypervisor). About six months ago HP downgraded the hard disk...
- HP Proliant ML110 G6 Released – Still a worthy virtualization work or home lab server? The much anticipated, at least by me , HP...
- Good Deal & Free Delivery on HP Proliant ML110 & ML115 G5 *** UPDATE – 21st April 2009 *** Prices on...
- Can you use the HP Proliant ML115 G5 Onboard RAID with VMware ESXi 3.5 Update 4 (U4)? Can you use the HP Proliant ML115 G5 onboard...
Posted in
Glad to see you took the plunge with the ML115 G5
I took your tip on the Geil RAM from overclockers so I should be truly up and running soon.
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Thanks for the tip. Was having problems getting round the failed installation on my ML110.
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Did you take up the offer of the free LOM 100c card? (I don’t see it in the pics)
I did and although the remote KVM display works well on the ML115 G5, I’ve yet to find a working browser/jre combination that will make the remote media redirection work – and I’ve tried a fair number now!
-Peter
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Hi, I’ve tried to install ESX 3i on my ML110 today following your instructions but at about 34% during the installation I’m getting bad sectors error. Is this a HDD fault or is there something else going on. My BIOS version is V1.22 instead of 0150624 date 24/06/2008.
Jimmy
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Hi,
i installed esxi on a ml110g5 ; it works fine except the network ; the host card is limited to 100mbs ; i created a win2003 serveur VM that is limited to 10 mbs ; any idea ? thanks
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I expect to receive my ML110 G5 today. HP Japan has a special right now for ML110/ML115 for < 100£. I plan to install ESX/ESXi on both the hard disk and a USB flash drive connected to the internal header. I will update with my results. If the system works well, I will get another before the sale is over (10/28).
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I’ve used a usb stick instead because of the above problem I’ve mentioned with the HDD. ESXi is booting off the usb fine but when I try to install the VMware-viclient after downloading it from the server I get ‘error reading archive’. Can the viclient be downloaded from somewhere else?
Thanks
Jimmy
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Hi,
I have been having a problem installing ESX 3i 3.5.0 on to an ML110 G5 I purchased at the weekend. I got round the initial installation problem by following the instructions above and changing the BIOS settings. However despite getting past this issue the install would get to 44% everytime and then fall over with the message:
the installation operation has encountered a fatal error:
Unable to write image to the selected disk. This maybe caused by bad sectors on the device or another hardware problem.
I tried updating the BIOS, different hard drive, sata cables etc but nothing worked. After talking to a friend at work and borrowing some additional memory, I installed the memory taking it up to 4GB of RAM and this time the installation worked without an issue. It would appear that the install will not work unless there is enough RAM installed on the system, the 1GB Dimm supplied with the server is not enough. Unfortunately I have to return the borrowed RAM to work and now have to wait for the RAM I had ordered from Dabs to turn up to get the system working properly.
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This is really annoying as I have what looks like an identical spec ML110 purchased about the same time. I’ve restored bios defaults, amde the changes, noticed another line re C1 enhanced mode was set to enabled too in the screen shots so tried that on as well (and off). I still get the 44% fatel error, bad sectors. I even tried adding a single disk to a JBOD array but couldn’t get that to work. Tried default 250GB disk and a 1TB disk with each on their own and as a pair. I’m running out of options to get this installed. I really don’t want to use HyperV/64bit Windows 2k8 if I can help it, at least not as a host.
Help! Could someone with it working post a saved copy of their bios settings?
CJ
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I was able to install ESX 3.5 without issue without any changes to the system. Of course, following the first reboot, I couldn’t create a datastore until rebooting and changing the BIOS as exhaustively mentioned above. I actually was going to try and use an iSCSI target for shared storage that I have set-up on my RHEL5 machine. Unfortunately, it appears as though even with the eval license you can’t connect to iSCSI storage without enabling VMotion and IP Storage at the same time. I understand why you can’t enable VMotion without a 2nd ESX host, but does anyone know why you can’t (at least it appears) enable IP Storage if you only have a single host?
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I managed to get ESX installed and runnin successfully off the HDD. I don’t know if its related to not having enough RAM but what I did was instead of trying to reinstall ESX again after the bad sectors error I chose the repair option which fixed the problem I was having.
Give this a go it might work for you.
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@Jimmy
I was able to complete the install of ESX (haven’t tried ESXi yet) with only 512MB of RAM. I installed to the included hard drive before changing the BIOS setting to Native SATA, by the way. Only after rebooting the first time did I change to Native SATA so that I could use the local storage for a VMFS partition.
For anyone else who is getting the failure at 44% or whatever, you should be able to get some more insight into the install process by going to the virtual consoles using CTL+ATL+F2,F3,F4,F5,F6, etc. (Linux thing). If you post the messages that you are getting here, I would be happy to try and analyze.
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I’m having the same issue with the install failing at 44%, changing the virtual console doesn’t really help, all the logs I can find are blank unfortunately. Is there anywhere specific that I could look for the logs that might help diagnose the issue?
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Hi Prav,
Yes, that’s the exact same memory as I’m using in my ML110 G5 and can confirm that I haven’t had any problems with it so far.
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Hi all,
I have been away on holiday so haven’t been around to reply though am back and in the swing of things again (though am missing the sunshine and warm weather).
Thanks for the comments and discussion on your ML110 and ESX experiences/problems. Keep them coming – as it makes interesting reading for myself and others.
As Moose points out there appears to be an issue with the amount of memory and the ESXi install failing at 44%. I have tried installing ESXi 3.5 on my ML110 G5 with the 1GB of memory (Elpida) I received with the server and also with 2 x 512MB (Samsung) modules and got the exact same error message.
Here is a link to a screen shot of the error.
I installed the 2 x 512MB and the 1 x 1GB DIMM together (giving a total of 2GB – I know not a good match for taking advantage of memory interleaving but for the purposes of this test it was ok
) and can confirm that it works just fine. This would imply that the amount of memory, rather than type, is the cause of the issue.
@ Peter: Thanks for the heads up on the Lights Out 100 card deal. I wasn’t aware that this deal was on unfortunately. I would like to try one out and see how it stacks up – will need to keep an eye out for another deal. I’d be interested to know how you find the remote control functionality on it (ie: whether it is at all sluggish).
@ Adrien: I’ll check out the network speed on my G5 and will post a response. What is your ML110 G5’s NIC plugging into – is this a 10Mb switch or may it have that port hard set to this slower speed?
@ Jimmy: Have you tried running instead of downloading it first? I don’t think however that this will make a difference but here is the Virtual Infrastructure Client (from ESX 3i 3.5.0 build 110271) for you to download. Also, I tried your ‘Repair’ suggestion when running with 1GB of memory though unfortunately I got the same error message again.
@ Moose and others: Thanks for the heads-up on the memory issue.
@ Joe: I think you’ll find that the memory issue described in this post will most likely be the cause of the problem.
I’m not sure if this ESXi install issue affects the ML115 G5 – though will check it out and report back sometime soon.
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I add a new NIC (intel pro) ; esxi see my card as a 1G card (against 100Mb for the original card) ; but my VM still indicate a 10mb speed ;
I found this on the web ; your opinon ?
regards
Adrien
Note that the network speeds reported by the guest network driver on the virtual machine do not
necessarily reflect the actual speed of the underlying physical network interface card. For example, the
vlance guest driver on a virtual machine reports a speed of 10Mbps, even if the physical card on the server
is 100Mbps or 1Gbps, because the AMD PCnet cards that ESX emulates are 10Mbps. However, ESX is not
limited to 10Mbps and transfers network packets as fast as the resources on the physical server machine
allows.
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Kiwi Si,
You mentioned in your blog that “One interesting point of note is that ESX see’s the hard disk connected to the onboard SATA controller as a SCSI VMFS3 device”, take a look at the specs for the ML110 G5 here:
—
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/en/WF06a/15351-15351-241434-241646-3328424-3577708.html
or to cut/paste:
Storage
Storage type
Non-hot plug 3.5-inch SAS
Non-hot plug 3.5-inch SATA
Max internal drives
Up to 4:
Non-hot plug LFF SAS 15K 450/300/146/72GB
Non-hot plug LFF SATA 7.2K 750/500/250/160GB
—
I have just ordered a ML110 G5 from serversdirect (thanks to your blog! plus 4GB as you and another SATA drive from overclockers) and am pretty happy about this if its true as I didnt know (I just assumed integrated SATA)! Do you know if our model has this? I might be able to borrow some SAS drives from work (we have a fair number of “unused” 146GB SAS drives in DELL caddies).
I am also considering upgrading at some point, the cpu to:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-221-IN
Thanks & great work on the blog(s)!
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Ok,I dont think I read this correctly and jumped the gun, I am assuming its SAS OR SATA integrated and ours is SATA!
Oh well nevermind (pretty obvious really I guess!)
What do you think about the processor upgrade though, that should fit no problem right?
Thanks
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Hi Martin,
Congratulations on taking the plunge and buying a G5! You won’t regret it.
I only have the SATA model of the ML110 G4 and G5 but they work great for an ESX test lab.
Not sure on the CPU upgrade. I personally wouldn’t bother as I think you’ll find the dual core Xeons in the G5 will handle most average loads that you’ll throw at it. Your bottle neck (depending on what services you intend running on the VM’s and the how many) will most likely be your disk speeds with the SATA’s (keeping mind that the onboard controller is only SATA 150) and/or having enough memory.
There is now a quad core ML110 G5 available:
ML110 G5 X3330 NHP-SATA
495124-xx1
Processor(s)
(1) Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® processor X3330 (2.66 GHz, 95W, 1333MHz FSB, 6MB)
Cache Memory
6MB (2 x 3MB) Level 2 cache
Memory
512 MB PC2-6400 ECC (DDR2-800MHz) (1 x 512 MB)
Storage Controller
HP Embedded 6 Port SATA Controller with Embedded RAID (4 ports for HDD)
Hard Drive
160GB SATA HDD
Internal Storage
Maximum 3.0TB (4 x 750GB) SATA
Optical Drive
16x SATA DVD-ROM
Form Factor
Micro ATX Tower (4U)
I haven’t seen any advertised as yet but if you find you need the extra CPU horse power then this may be a good option at a later stage.
I’d recommend installing ESX(i) onto your ML110 and having a good play around with it. From there you’ll get a better idea of where it is lacking. As mentioned I’d almost guarentee it’d be with the onboard SATA controller. At which point you may want to consider a dedicated storage controller like an e200 with BBW. This can take both SATA and SAS drives. Though at this stage the SATA speeds even on the e200 is still 150 – this may change with a future e200 contoller update. If you have some ’spare’ SAS drives lying around this could be a tempting option.
Hope this helps and let me know how you get on.
Cheers,
Simon
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@ Adrien.
Hi Adrien,
Your correct when you say “the network speeds reported by the guest network driver on the virtual machine do not necessarily reflect the actual speed of the underlying physical network interface card”. Though the biggest cause I’ve seen of a VM not showing the correct network speed is down to a VM not having VMTools installed. What usually happens is that the VM will generally show a 10Mbps NIC speed but as soon as you install VMTools this then changes to the correct speed (or at least 100 Mbps – assuming you’re using a 1Gbps connection).
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Well my new ML110 G5 was delivered today at about 9am (pretty good delivery times there) and the memory/SATA drive at about 12pm.
For the money, the kit is superb (thanks for the blog Si – you saved me alot of money, I was originally looking on EBAY at rack mount servers/towers!), it really is a decent (incredibly quiet) platform to run VMWARE ESXi on.
My setup is follows:
I have a pretty hardcore wirless ADSL router downstairs connected via CAT-5 to one wall socket ethernet converter (this is really cool as it in essence broadcasts my wireless LAN around the power sockets in the house – so I dont need a range extender or wireless access point).
Upstairs I have the ML110 (4GB GeiL RAM, 2×250GB SATA drives (will get bigger at some point but as you recommended Si, would definately like to pickup a SAS/SATA controller at the sametime) connected to another power/ethernet adaptor connected to the wall socket which has CAT5 to my ML110 NIC (enabling it to connect to the wireless). May sound dodgy, but I’m using WPA2, so hopefully thats all good.
The install went seamlessly – I had absolutely no issues whatsoever (thanks to the blog here, I knew about VT but not the SATA switch), it also clearly recognised the onboard NIC which is great!
The 2nd SATA drive had no SATA cable nor was there a spare one on the motherboard, so I used the DVD drives cable and then connected a USB DVD R/W external drive (which was bought sometime ago from Tesco for next to nothing!) which the system recognised and proceeded to install VMware ESX 3.5i from (thats cool I thought, very cool of it to do that).
So you could possibly remove the internal DVD ROM and use the extra space for another SATA drive, I’m not sure if the casing has the same drive enclosures (the green aligator clips!) at the top of the tower.
I actually work with ESX 3.5 (the enterprise retail version) at work which I have running on two Dell PowerEdge 6850’s each with 16GB of RAM, 2xQLogic 4GB HBA’s and several 1GB NIC – connected via both ISCSI and FIBRE to 2xNetApp FAS270’s SAN’s.
This all works awesome – on one side I’ve got Linux and a heavily loaded database server alongside MS Windows 2003 and SQL Server 2005, I’m really interested to see the difference (if there is any) with ESXi.
I’ve also used VMWare Free Server and was looking at this as a hopeful replacement!
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Hi Simon,
did you ever install ESXi on your ML115 G5? I’m getting the same error as you had originally on your ML110 G5…
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Hi Rose,
Not as yet – that’s a project for this weekend. Check back soon as I will post my findings and, hopefully, and workarounds.
What is the error you’re getting?
Cheers,
Simon
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Ok, I’ll be looking out for that. Looks like I may have to install it onto a USB disk..
The error is the same as yours – cannot find a supported device to write image to.
thanks SImon!
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Hi Simon
Have you had a chance yet to install ESXi onto the ML115 G5?
I am looking at buying an HP server as I have an HP ESXi (Green 465388-B21) USB disk and wondered if the ML115 G5 Quad Core model would work? I know it’s not on the HCL but it’s cheaper than a DL360 or DL380
Thanks for all the great info on vmware.
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Hi Martin,
Unfortunately I haven’t had time to install ESXi onto the ML115 G5 as yet. I got side-tracked with installing OpenFiler for some iSCSI shared storage.
To be honest I don’t know if ESXi would work with the Quad Core model – though if I was to guess I’d say that, as long as they haven’t changed the onboard chipset including the storage controller and NIC then it most likely would. Though it could be something of an expense punt. If it didn’t work you could always install Hyper-V Server 2008 on it instead.
I would be most curious to know if the ML115 G5 and ML110 G5 Quad Core models work with ESX 3.5 and/or ESXi 3.5.
Anyone out there tried this yet?
I hope to have a go with my Ml115 G5 in the next week or so. I’ll let you know how I get on.
Cheers,
Simon
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An update from me – I was able to boot ESXi from a USB stick on the ML115 G5 (Dual core) as I didn’t manage to get it installed onto the hard disk.
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Did someone manage to get the ML110 G5 to work with a raid 0 or 1 configuration? I’ve got two Sata discs of 500 gigs but i can’t get it to work. I recieve the same error message as mentioned in the screen dump, but the bios settings are set correctly (only raid is activated)
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Hi @ all,
re the question of Quad Core support:
I bought recently a ML 150 G5 with a Quad Core CPU (Xeon E5405 Quadcore-Prozessor 2 GHz, Intel 5100 Chipset).
I have installed ESX 3.5 Update 2 without any problems. Testing of ESXi has not yet started, I am still waiting for some extra ordered parts (RAM, additional non-hot plug drive cage etc.)
Not a ML 110 / 115 with Intel 3200 Chipset but I would guess that 3200 with Quad Core CPU will work on these systems as well.
Cheers
Mike
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Hi all,
@Rose: Thanks for letting us know how you got on with your ML115 G5 install. Did you add any extra memory (ie: >1GB) when trying to install ESXi to disk?
@Getupaaaah: Unfortunately it won’t work when trying to run the onboard RAID. If you are going to use this as a production type system then I personally wouldn’t use the onboard RAID controller anyway as they are reported to not be particularly good. If you want/need RAID then if your budget will stretch then maybe have a look at an HP E200 controller?
@Mike: Thanks for the update on running ESXi U2 on the ML150 G5. It sounds hopeful that ESXi U2 may run ok on an ML110/115 G5 Quad Core. I would like to try one though the ole budget won’t stretch to £580+. Also I couldn’t really justify another machine.
Let me know how you get on with your ML150 G5 running ESXi once you get the system fully up and operational.
Thanks again to you all for your comments,
Simon
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Hi there Thnx for reply Simon.
You’re right i’ve experienced problems with raid since february. So it is indeed not ideal. Glad it’s just a play server at home.
I broke the raid image but did not get it to work with esxi. It could install it, but after a few seconds….. Well I now what a PSOD is
I’ve used de default settings with the adjustments mentioned above. And using “user” Harddisc settings instead of “auto” with no succes. At this moment I managed to get my hands on ESX itself and that’s running fine.
greetz
Getupaaah
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Hi Getupaaah,
Out of curiousity what version of the firmware are you running?
Cheers,
Simon
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Hi Simon, that was a problem in the beginning. With my previous firmware. I couldn’t install esxi on my server, even if would use a separate hard disc. So when i’ve upgraded to the newest firmware update (2008.07.15) I was able to install it. But then after a few seconds (when the server was rebooted, and the ESXi software came up) a PSOD showed up
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Thanks for above..
I want to try it too. Can i download esx3i for Free.
Kinds regards.
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Hi Simon,
yes I’ve got 2GB RAM. Why?
rose
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Thank you so much Simon!
I have a ML110 G5 up and running with 8Gb of RAM, Smart Array E200i, 2×250Gb HDD, 2xGigabit NIC’s.
ESXi was installed straight onto a 2Gb USB stick, I didn’t bother installing to the HDD.
The most difficult thing was finding the SATA/SAS cable kit for the Smart Array E200i.
I initially had some problems with booting but after updating the firmware, and moving the controller card to the first PCI-X slot everything worked fine.
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Hi Simon,
First of all, fantastic blog; very clear, easy to follow and ultimately the reason for me purchasing the ML110 G5. It’s just a shame I missed those sub £100 deals while I was doing all my research! I got one for £160, from eBay which is still not bad considering the shop price now.
I actually bought an ML370 G3 off eBay for £400 a few months ago as it was on the compatibility list for ESX 3.5 which I’m getting quite into at work. It was heavy, noisy (no fan limiter when running ESX) and basically hung whenever I tried to copy a VM! For this reason it went back on eBay and that was when I first saw this site.
I wanted to be extra cautious with this purchase as it’s obviously not supported but I’m very pleased with the results so thank you for posting so much info.
I’ve now got ESX 3.5 Update 2 running on an ML110 G5. Out of the box, ESX 3.5 and ESX 3.5 Update 1 do not support the onboard NIC as people have found, but Update 2 resolves this.
I’ve upgraded the RAM exactly as you have too (same shop as well!) and the install went flawlessly.
Assuming Update 2 is used, the only additional purchase to this server was the RAM. The only configuration change was as you described in the BIOS.
Thanks again,
Matt
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Hi DFG,
Here’s the link to the ESXi page on VMware. From here you can download ESXi for free – don’t forget to register your details for your free license file.
http://www.vmware.com/products/esxi/
Hope this helps,
Simon
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Hi Rose,
I was just wondering if you were using 1GB of memory as on the ML110 G5 when trying to install ESXi – this causes problems and can be resolved by adding extra RAM.
Thanks for letting me know.
Simon
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Hi Rob,
Thanks for the information on your configuration – it sounds quite similar to mine apart from my only having 4GB of RAM. Though I am tempted to take it up to 8GB at some stage. Just need a very cheap deal on memory to come up.
I’m currently running 4 VM’s quite comfortably (mixture of W2K3 and W2K8 – with Exchange 2007 and MS SQL 2005).
I like the idea of booting from USB and taking some of the load off the disks. Though I am now running my VM’s off of an ML110 G4 running OpenFiler with iSCSI LUN’s.
I’ve started monitoring the power consumption on running an ML110 G4, ML110 G5 and associated switches, etc. I picked up a great little device from Maplin which gives all this information, including running cost. I will post an article on this in the next week or so.
All the best,
Simon
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Hi Simon,
Thank you very much..
i’am now downloading the ISO.
Thanks a lot.
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Hey Matt,
Thanks so much for the feedback. Comments like this really inspire to write more blog postings. I’m glad that people are finding them useful.
I’ve still got a few drafted postings including getting ESXi up and running on an Ml115 G5 that I’ve got to finish off.
Have fun with your new ESXi server.
Cheers,
Simon
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Glad I found this site. I want to order the HP ProLiant ML110 G5 Server Quad-Core Intel Xeon X3330 server. Do I need to buy anything else for this server to use esx 3.5, is it worth getting the e200i with this server,is it needed?
Do I need to replace the nic? Wha do you guys suggest?
Thanks
I am ready to order this as soon as I have some conformation. Thanks guys.
Luis
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Another question, I see there are different models of the G5. Does anyone have a direct link to what works right out the box in the US?
Per my question above, the quad core is not much more then a dual core. I just need some advice on which way to.
I was thinking the dual core and the extra cash on a raid card?
Any info is highly appreciated.
Thanks
Luis
[Reply]
Hi Luis,
It really is going to come down to what you intend to use your ML110 G5 (test lab versus production server) for and the number and nature (eg: high resource services such as SQL, Exchange, etc) of the VM’s running on it.
If you are going to use the server for live production use then I’d strongly recommend going for an e200 controller to provide you with decent RAID and features such as Battery Backed Write Cache (BBWC). Even if you’re going to use it heavily for a test/home lab and if your budget allows I’d still recommend adding an e200 controller to the system.
As per your last message, I would personally go for a dual core and the e200 disk controller option as I have never found the CPU’s in my dual core ML110’s and ML115 to be pushed at all, even when running a number of VM’s. You are more likely to notice the bottle-neck being with the disk access times and memory before you do CPU utilization.
To answer your query in your last message the only other thing you may want to consider is adding more memory to the base 1GB that you get with the server. 2GB of memory will see you right for the short term, 4GB will handle most things (depending on how many and the types of VM’s you’ll be running) and 8GB (if you have a healthy budget to spend on your first ML110
)
Another network card is also useful but with a one ESX test lab server implementation definitely not necessary.
Hope this helps. Let us know what you decide and how you get on.
Cheers,
Simon
[Reply]
Hello to you all.
I have a ML150 G5 and tried to install ESXi.
The issue I get is that I need to do as you with do with the ML110 in BIOS.
And after that the installation continues.
Now to the problem!
After 99% it stops!
When I tried the “original” CD I could enter debugging page and got errors about CPU timeout issues.
“cpu1: 1025 ALERT: Heartbeat: 470: PCPU0 didn’t have a heartbeat since xxx seconds *may* be locked up”
And then I cant get past that.
Tried the “HP” CD and then I got to 99% aswell.
Seems like the QUAD processor not is working with this model.
Get other WARNING text about the CPU2.
“cpu2:1187 WARNING: Term: 1339: Unprintable character 0xf”
And a ALERT for cpu0
“cpu0: 1141 ALERT: NMI: 1625: Faulting eip:esp [0x64f8c6:0x3bd7a58]”
Anyone that could analyse these issues?
Thanks // Jimi
[Reply]
@ Jimi
I have an ML150 G5 Quad and got ESX3.5 Update 2 installed without any issues.
If you tried the HP CD as well and you got stuck at the same point it sounds to me like a hardware issue of the CPU.
Cheers
Mike
[Reply]
@ Mike
Wow quick response!!!
Humm, since the server is brand new, recieved it yesterday, it would be strange if the CPU is broken.
But well stranger things has happened.
Explain if you can how you did to install.
Did you do any special changes in BIOS?
And did you use a RAID array or the built-in model.
Please help me since it seems like it should work as you say, but I cant get it to finish the installation.
BR // Jimi
[Reply]
@ Jimi
Only the recommended settings which are explained here by Simon, nothing else. Right now I am using the HP SAS SC40Ge SAS/SATA Controller NOT the onboard SATA Controller. In addition i got a 3Ware 9650SE-4LPML but not yet any disks connected since I am waiting for the damn drive cage to be delivered.
Even if the server is new keep in mind that HP is using a lot of refurbished stuff even in new servers. We saw that more then once with DL Servers which I am working with @ work.
Try the diagnostics CD from HP to test the CPU. If it fails I would contact HP to get you a “new” CPU deleivered.
Cheers
Mike
[Reply]
Thanks Kiwi. You guys are quick responding. I decided to go with the ML110 G5 with the e200 controller and 4GB of ram to start.
I want to run this in a lab at home and maybe use a couple VMs for true production. I have my eye on the Dual-Core Xeon 3075 2.66 GHz.
Hopefully I can run 64bit OSs on this processor for exchange 2007 and a couple windows 2k8 and 2k8 servers with at least one sql server. Eventually 8GB of ram.
Thanks again for the info, I just need to find a good place to buy this now. I am so ready to play with this setup.
Appreciate everyones input on this site. This is addicting.
Luis
[Reply]
@ Mike
Very strange!
I went through the Tests and was fine.
I removed my two new 2GB memory units and placed the original two 512MB that was in the shippment, now instead of proceeding it stops me at the beginning and drops me at the dump about not compatible system again.
And this time it says that it has some kind of write error on the hardrives!?
This is to weird for me.
Soon I will do what I was trying not to do.
Linux dist + VMware Server.
And if that fails on ML150 Windows + VMware.
But really want to have the ESXi on this machine.
1 x Intel Quad-Core Xeon E5405 / 2 GHz <— is that the processor you have in your ML150?
BR // Jimi
[Reply]
Here is what will ship next week.
HP ProLiant ML110 G5 Server
Dual-Core Intel® Xeon® Processor 3075 (2.66GHz/4M)
4GB of RAM
Does the HP Smart Array E200/128 BBWC Controller need the SAS cable kit?
Thanks again
Sorry for all the questions. I don’t want to order the wrong items.
Luis
[Reply]
@ Jimi
Yep, exactly the same CPU. 512 MB RAM will not work with ESX, see Simons comments above.
Strange indeed since I have not changed anything else. What about the image of the SWR, perhaps the iso has an issue?
Cheers
Mike
[Reply]
@ Mike
You referring to the iso downloaded from VMware?
Tried both with and without HP addon.
Get the same issue. So I dont think it could be the image. Unless it would be related to what program you burn with? I use IMGBurn.
Wich one did you use, both image and application?
(I have 2×512MB from shippment)
But if needed I will insert more memory.
Just thought I try so the memory wasnt fooling me to believe in CPU issues.
Im start over from scratch and go trough the procedure again.
But my BIOS doesnt look exactly the same as ML110 pictures above.
Maybe I should try to install W2K3 to ensure that CPU is working or not?
Hate this much work for a usally simple thing to do.
BR // Jimi
[Reply]
@ Jimi
Download from VMWare webpage (without HP addon) and burned with Nero.
1 GB of RAM might be not enough, tried it with 2 GB instead.
Cheers
Mike
[Reply]
Hi all,
@Luis: Congrats on placing your order – you’ll have fun with your new purchase. Yes, don’t forget to order the SAS/SATA Cable kit – I found that these can be hard to get hold of sometimes. The part number you need if using SATA disks with your e200i is HP PN: 430762-001. I am currently running W2K8 VM’s running Exchange x64 and another with SQL 2005 along with a handful of other servers.
@Jimi: As Mike mentioned you will need more than 1GB (ideally 2GB+) to install ESX. Let us know how you get on with getting the install to work.
Cheers,
Simon
[Reply]
@ Mike, Simon
Thanks for all your support!
But I still get stuck on 99% no matter what I do.
I have 4GB mem, but no luck.
Could it be that I should wait 30min-60min while on 99% if something is weird?
I installed Ubuntu Server edition without any problems.
So I could use VMware Server for linux, but it feels like a lost battle aginst the machine…
// Jimi
[Reply]
Hi Jimi,
I don’t like your chances unfortunately at getting ESXi 3.5 running though the good news is that people are reporting that ESX 3.5 works ok. It appears to be something of a mystery at this stage why one works and the other doesn’t.
Check out these links for more info:
http://communities.vmware.com/message/1040174#1040174
http://communities.vmware.com/message/1027060#1027060
These guys are reporting that they have got ESXi running on an ML160 G5 – not sure if their workaround would apply to the ML150 G5:
http://communities.vmware.com/message/1039111#1039111
Cheers,
Simon
[Reply]
The part number you gave me for the e200i HP PN: 430762-001, when ordering the e200i and the cable kit, this is all that is available:
PCI Express Card – 411508-B21 HP Smart Array E200/128 BBWC Controller [Add $349.00]
457690-B21 – HP NHP SAS/SATA 4 port cable kit.
Is this correct? I see e200 but not e200i on the hp site.
Thanks again
Luis
[Reply]
@ Simon
Thanks, will try that option tomorrow.
Could be the same issue, we will see.
Great support in this blog!
I will report this tomorrow.
If this also fails, I will go with the linux-way.
BR // Jimi
[Reply]
I figured it all out. It is on the way. Thanks!!!
[Reply]
@ Simon, great site!
@ Jimi,
I’ve got a ML110 G4 and get the same PSOD as you…
ALERT: Heartbeat: 470: PCPU0 didn’t have a heartbeat since xxx seconds *may* be locked up”
No place on disk to dump data
I’ve enabled Intel VT in the bios too. The CPU isn’t faulty as I’ve installed Windows 2003 Server and Windows XP Pro with no issues.
Did you manage to get yours working?
Cheers
[Reply]
sorry for double post, but i just thought I’d that i just created an esxi bootable usb stick and it loads up fine. However, it doesn’t responf to F2 for customisation nor F12 to restart. The numlock keyboard light does respond. Browsing to the DHCP IP via IE fails.
Any ideas?
http://www.veenema.net/index.php?Virtualization:HOW_TO%3A_Create_your_own_bootable_ESX_3i_usb_stick
[Reply]
hmm, even with the USB stick option I still get a PSOD after a while of the box being up and non-responsive to F2/F12.
[Reply]
Okay…
I have tried the bootloader changes suggested in VMware communities.
Didn’t make any difference.
Anyway, have to to linux now I belive…
In conclusion: The machine won over man – Soon Terminator 4 will take over the world.
[Reply]
Hi Simon,
as promised a short report of my experience with installing / using ESXi 3.5 Update 2 on a ML 150 G5 with Xeon E5405 CPU.
As posted before I had no issues with ESX 3.5 U2. Booting ESXi from a USB stick plugged into the internal USB port of the server (the ML 110 / 115 has also this nice internal USB port) looked good in the beginning but I also got to the point where it looks as if ESXi was running but it was not reacting to keystrokes (F2 or F12)
I looked again into VMWare community and tried these settings:
Activate the Enhanced Mode for SATA1 and SATA2 in Advanced tab – Hard Disk Configuration
Activate Intel Virtualization Technology in Advanced – CPU configuration
Enabled KB/MS OS IRQ in Advanced Tab.
After changing these setting I was able to boot ESXi from the stick and the installed version of ESX 3.5 is also still running as before.
I have not yet tested my VMs but hopefully they will work as expected.
Now I will try to add the driver for a 3Ware 9650SE Raid controller to ESXi….that will be fun…
Cheers
Mike
[Reply]
I’m trying to get esxi running on an hp ML115, but I’m stuck with the “unable to find supported device” problem, and I can’t find the same (or similar) options in BIOS as suggested. using BIOS v. 02.61. Any suggestion. Thinking of trying a usb stick instead but I need to get one first then..
[Reply]
Hi Mike,
Thanks for the update and info on the ML150 G5. This’ll certainly come in useful for others reading this. Glad it worked out ok.
How did you get on with running your VM’s on it?
Cheers,
Simon
[Reply]
For those who have ordered the raid card, do you know which one of these two is the correct one?
409180-B21 HP Smart Array E200/64MB Controller
or
399548-B21 – HP Smart Array E200i controller – Storage controller (RAID) – SATA-150 / SAS – 3
There is a big price difference between the two. I just need to know the ones you guys are using.
Thanks
Luis
[Reply]
Hi Luis,
This is the e200 controller I bought for my home ESX lab:
411508-B21 HP Smart Array E200 Controller w/ 128MB cache
It cost me £178.00 UK pounds.
Don’t forget to buy the special SATA cable that this card requires. Details of the cables part number, etc can be found in my blog posting here: http://www.techhead.co.uk/building-a-low-cost-cheap-vmware-esx-test-server
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Simon
[Reply]
Kiwi Si
Sorry to ask again any luck with ESXi installed on your ML115 G5?
Also do you have any screen shots that show the Configuration (Power, temp, storage controller) of your ML110 G5 or ML115 G5. I am interested to know what it picks up and shows for these models.
Still holding off from buying an HP at the mo I’m hoping the price will drop soon.
[Reply]
Hi Everyone,
Just come accross Marin Site and find it very interresting. I would like to contribute time and time; just come back from USA where I did a bootcamp on VMWARE http://www.vmtraining.net/ultimatebootcamp/
I am also London base Systems Admin, etc…
Done few other stuff, Exchange up 2007, AD up 2008, SharePoint and MOSS 2007. Windows up 2008
and other stuff
I need some leeds on where I can get some affordable servers for my test lab.
Thx
Kakombe
[Reply]
Hi Everyone, hi Martin,
my ML115G5 (with 4GB Kingston-RAM) wouldn’t install off CD, but extracting the “VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0_Update_2-110271.i386.dd”-Image off the CD and dd-ing it to an USB-Stick worked like a charm. Internal Nic and HD-Controller are usable, will try the Nvidia-Raid (though i won’t use it) later.
This Link describes the extraction-process:
http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/Boot%203i%20from%20USB%20flash%20drive.html
Have fun,
Rainer
[Reply]
Hi FPrefect
Thanks for that.
Do you have a screen shot of the configuration tab in Vi client I’m interested to know what it picks up and shows with regard to the Power, temp, fans, storage controller.
Cheers
Martin
[Reply]
Hi Martin,
fyi: http://www.move-ment.de/esxi/Health.png
I tried the nvidia raid (configured 2 disks as raid 1) but esxi didnt recognize the array, 2 separate disks were found, same as without raid
useless anyway…
Have a nice weekend,
Rainer
[Reply]
Rainer
Cheers for that much appreciated.
I’m hoping they might provide more support when they bring out another upgrade. That might support more raid devices and show more in the health configuration.
Have a good weekend too.
Martin
[Reply]
Thanks for all the good tips in this blog. Especially the one about running it from USB stick. Works fine.
BUT!!! I have lost 1 TB of data during this weekends experimental migration
In my previous setup I hade 3 SATA-disks in a HP ML110 G5 with VMware server 2 on SLES10 as virtualization platform.
Disk 1, 250 GB contained SLES10 as hostOS and also all guests.
Disk 2, 750 GB contained lots of data, owned by SLES and NFS-shared to all guests and networkattached gadgets@home.
Disk 3, used as disk 2.
In the new setup I have ESXi on a USB-stick connected to the USB-socket on the motherboard.
4 SATA-disks, each on 750 GB.
Disk 1 contains the guests which have been converted using VMware converter.
DISK 2 and 3 remains on their previous places and connectors, however VMware reports them as VMFS3.
Disk 4 is a new datastore for guestsOSes.
To access my old data-drives I have tried to boot up on the old disk. Works ok but SLES says the drives contains 0 files?
Any ideas how i can regain the lost data from disks 2 and 3?
[Reply]
I cannot get ESXi to work with ML115 G5, has anyone been able to get this working?
[Reply]
Having similar problem with Jimi, and further research show it is not just only HP ML servers that have this problem, IBM servers which have SATA drives are throwing this errors.
It is an installation issue because on some cases it runs up to 99% then fails, other instances it does not even pass 0%. VMware watch your backs, you are not the only HYpervisor in the market; Sun’s xvmserver(stupid, enough not free) and the good new Hyper-v, Oh did i mention it works on all servers? shame it does not have memory over commit. once it does, vmware can kiss esx i good bye. Unless they act fast and fix my problem…… hahahahahaha!
[Reply]
Ml115 is alive, with Xen Server Express 5……
Rather ESX but need to crack on with a Hyper V that works on this box, if I had the cash would buy a server that has the SAS drives but aint got that…
[Reply]
Hi Jude,
Does the SATA raid on the ML115 work with Xen Server Express 5?
[Reply]
Hey Henk,
Yes it does work, that is what I have running now..
[Reply]
Yihaaaaaaaaaaa, the internal USB stick works for me. ESX worked as well, But i wanted to use esxi also. No PSOD till now. Thnx FPrefect.
[Reply]
Hi Jude,
Tried Xen but when I try to install it it just get stuck in a loop and keeps rebooting. Its a ML115 G1 any suggestions?
Henk
[Reply]
Just as a confirmation – I had the exact same experience – after ading RAM from 1GB to 8GB it installed first time no problem.
[Reply]
I had problems installing with 8 Gb of ram so I had to go with the USB-install.
And btw, I managed to get my data back. Unfortunately in raw data format so It’ll cost me some time to reorganize :-/
And another thing, for those in need of USB-support. Get an “ethernet to USB hub”. Works lika a charm after copying usbd.sys to the windows guests \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\USBD.SYS
[Reply]
thank you for information
[Reply]
This information is very important for me.
I will try to install agine my computer(Acer M641 /Intel Q6600 CPU/4G Ram/).
Thank very much
[Reply]
I have just installed ESXi onto a hard disk in my ML110 G5, which the install appears to have gone successfully, however when I come to boot the server it goes through the boot sequence, comes to the final one which is PXE and then displays a message “Operating System not found”.
I have moved the HDD to the top of the boot sequence in the BIOS with still no joy.
Any ideas.
Chris
[Reply]
A USB-stick will not last forever.
How can we make backup-copies of our vmware USB-sticks?
[Reply]
I was also suffering with the PSOD issue on my ML110 G5, however the latest release (Update 3) seems to have cured the problem! Which is great news as I was getting really stressed with HyperV Server… Would be interested to here if Update 3 has cured the problem for others too!
[Reply]
Hey fellas,
I’m sitting here with TWO ML110 G5s, single disk, dualcore 2.3ghz. They’re identical except one of them has 2GB of mem, the other has 1GB.
One of them fails on install around 40ish percent. Guess which? Yup, the 1GB.
This is esx3i update 3. I wonder if someone fiddled with something. I haven’t tested U2, though. – Just a heads up.
If you have trouble booting from the CD, check your BIOS. You should set native to SERIAL-ATA, but keep an eye on disks. I think the CDROM are SATA-drives, located on sata channel 5 iirc. For me, “AUTO” didn’t work, and I had to set it to “CDROM” manually to get it to boot from CD, even if boot order was set correctly. Might have something to do with SATA native mode. I’ll soonish stuff some more memory in the 1GB-box, see if it changes anything.
Tadah~
[Reply]
Hi Hagar,
Thanks for the heads-up on U3. Unfortunately the 1GB 40%’ish limit affected revisions also.
I’ve always found it works when with 1.5GB or more memory.
All the best,
Simon
[Reply]
Hi,
anybody of you tried to use the ML110G5 DVD-drive as a hostdevice under ESXi? Under my ESXi the DVD-drive is connected as /dev/genscsi/vmhba1:0:0. Unfortunately I can’t select any host-device in a client. Read several ideas for solutions in the web but none helped.
Do you have an idea?
Regards,
Karl
[Reply]
Actually, I’m not sure if this is because of 1GB memory. I thought they had 2×512GB (and 4×512MB), but they have 1GB-modules, which means the one not working does not have pairs (only one module).
I’ll try to get a second DDR2 1GB module.
Anyone on less than 1GB (in pairs) able to use their system?
[Reply]
Vmware ESXi don’t detect the hard disc interfaces in any machines i have tried it in 9 different servers !! god.
IDE SCSI SATA SAS hard drives, don’t matter it don’t detect them.
And vmware whant to charge for the full vercion of this ??? xD jajajajajajaja.
[Reply]
Thanks for all those informations. I decided to start my first VMWare configuration.
Here is my running configuration :
(bios changed to SATA native & Virtualization on)
Proliant ML110G5 P/N:444810-051
- Xeon 3065 @ 2.33Ghz
- 2×2GB (kingston KTH-XW4400E6/2G)
- Built-in 160GB Seagate7200.10
- Built-in gigabit NIC (BCM5722)
Those ESXi release were installed successfully:
- ESXi v3.5.0u2 (build 110271)
- ESXi v3.5.0u3 (build 123629)
I then created a single virtual machine to check performance using a simple Linux server distribution (SME server v7.3)
The virtual installation process was a bit slower than a physical one. But data transfer from a PC to this virtual server were very slow. For example, a 1GB file transfer from a client PC to the virtual SME server took about 4 minutes to complete. The same transfer on the same SME server installed physically on the same machine (without the VMWare stack) took 20 seconds only!
To check if the gigabit link was the cause, I did a local copy of those 1GB set of files on the server (# cp -R src_dir dest_dir). The copy took 180 seconds on the virtual configuration and 3 seconds on the physical one.
A Windows XPpro virtual installation took hours, and the same 1GB set of files took also many minutes to complete.
A bit dissapointed to see that virtual machines worked fine but very slowly, I decided to stop my VMWare tests
Best regards from France.
[Reply]
Soviet,
What make/model of server have you been trying to install ESX on. Also, what version of ESX(i) have you been trying?
Si
[Reply]
Hi,
I’m using ESXi u3 using an ML110G5 with an E200-SmartArray. I’m trying to get hpacucli to run or finding something different in order to check the status of my drives/arrays. The u3-HP-edition just produces a PSOD so I’m using the ordinary ESXi u3-Edition which works just fine but without a possibility for me to check the drives.
My Storage resides in vmhba2:0:0:3. How can I checkup on my RAID1? Does anyone of you have some kind of workaround?
I already got myself an hpacucli.rpm-Package, installed that manually, installed further a libstdc++-libc6.2-2.so.3-Package since hpacucli needs that but after that I’m doomed. hpacucli queries /dev/mem which I don’t have (mknod is also missing).
Anybody around here with some ideas?
Regards and a lot of hope,
Karl
[Reply]
Hmmm… I run into a different Problem:
Panic: Failed to find USB boot partition
Immediately before this, the last successful load is:
Using /mod/ipmi_devintf.o
Module load of ipmi_devintf succeeded.
config explicitly loaded
No usb 2.0 controller found; expect a slower boot due to slower usb 1.1 speed
Waiting for USB boot partition to show up… retrying after 1 additional seconds
(which repeats for 2, 4, 8, 16 and 32 additional seconds), and then fails with:
Panic: Failed to find USB boot partition
How do I tell the script not to use the USB boot (as I have installed from CD onto the SATA disk).
I have NEWER firmware than yours [the current 07/15/08](0150715).
A difference I can see is that there is no entry under advanced where “Intel Virtualization Technology (VT)” shows in your screengrab..
1
Is this because I have only a Duocore and needed to get something higher (in processor, or ram)?
or
2
Do I downgrade the firmware (and if so, HP support site has no legacy firmware versions that I can see…?
Specs
VMware ESX Server 3i 3.5.0 Build 123629
Proliant ML110 G5 Intel Penium Dual CPU E2160 @ 1.80
1GB memory (2 sticks)
maybe simply not enough ram..?
[Reply]
Wow! Since when were HP doing ML115s for less than £100?
I recently picked up one for £170 inclusive and thought it was a good deal. It is a quad core AMD Opteron job with 512Mb of RAM. I spent an additional £88 pounds for 8Gb of Corsair RAM from Overclockers UK and also added a 1TB HDD.
A solid machine though the fans sound like a cat5 hurricane when it is booted.
Thanks for the info on resolving the ESXi installation problem. I was scraching my head until I came across your blogg.
I like the server so much that I may well buy another one.
[Reply]
There is something wrong with the seagate ES 250gb disk supplied. Mine is so slow its unusable. Replacing it with an older 7200.10 & it runs brilliantly now.
[Reply]
Thanks for all the great tips about the HP Proliant ML110 G5 ESX3i setup.
With this information I have been able to configure my HP to work with ESX3i but still have an issue with Windows 2008 x64 saying the CPU is not 64 bit supported.
It’s a ML110 G5 – Dual Xenon 3065 processor. Does anyone else have x64 OS’s working on this processor?
[Reply]
I’ve got Vmware ESXi up and working on my ML115 G5 using a USB memory stick.
This is all well and good, but what I’m not clear on is how I update ESXi when eventually Vmware release updates for the product.
Will I be able to update the product through use of the Vmware Infrastructure update applet? If not, will I have to do some fiddling with the memory stick?
Any ideas anyone?
Thanks
Peter
[Reply]
esxi via USB stick works great on this platform.
esx 3.5 server installed via cd works perfect.
very cheap machine for testing. bought this for 190€ on ebay, added 6GB ram and a second 500GB sata drive
[Reply]
Peter Brown
ESXi on a USB stick is NOT supported by VMware. It is intended for OEM manufacturers, they will then take care of updates as part of your on-going support. If you had installed ESXi on to a harddrive then you would be able to maintain patches and upgrades via Update Manager.
You ‘may’ be able to slipstream updates, worst case is you update the USB stick, add in Host and IP again and re-import the Virtual Machines.
[Reply]
I updated my vmware esxi using the update client, so for now it works. It’s installed on a USB stick.
[Reply]
Glad to report successful install of esx 3.5.0 u3 (130755) on a ml110 g5, 4.5gb using onboard everything.
Question : Planning on installing an e200, what is the best way to monitor the raid and be notified of any degradation?
[Reply]
[...] instaling ESX 3.5 on the HP ML110 G5 [...]
Did anyone experience performance problems when stressing the disk subsystem of an HP ML110 G5?
I did install several versions of vmware (ESX3 commercial, ESX3i, vmware server 2.0) and vmware server I installed on both Windows 2003 and Linux. When I use a peer2peer client in my guest OS (Linux 64 bit) I get wait i/o percentages up to 100%. The guest OS freezes for sometimes 2 to 3 minutes.
I’ve read through all vmware kb’s, searched around the internet for 2 months. I’ve come across people having the same issues (all wihtout a solution). I’ve played with power management options, APIC settings and so on. Nothing seemed to help.
Simply try to copy a 2GB file (or larger) using a 1Gbit connection to your guest OS. With every installation of vmware the first 300 to 500 MB copies fast, then performance drops to almost zero, and the guest freezes.
So far I figured it is the raid controller of the ML110 G5 not supporting some scsi I/O calls made by vmware and this causes a scsi timeout freezing the guest. Sometimes it takes 2 or 3 minutes for this timeout to end and then the guest starts to get responding again.
Anyone having the same issues??
[Reply]
I had this same issue. Went into the BIOS and disabled 2 of the cores on a 4 core system. I could then install ESXi. This was on two Dell 2900s.
Cal
[Reply]
Just bought the ML110G5 from Dabs and after reading the post got ESXi running on it. I am waiting for OcUK to get their WD1TB disks back in stock as I have ordered 3 along with a 2GB USB stick to run ESX off going forward.
My question though is will ESX recognise the USB disk as a valid install target or do i need to build the USB drive first then stick it in the server and boot?
[Reply]
Hi Matt,
Congratulations on your purchase – you’ll have plenty of fun running ESX on it.
Check out my posting about running ESXi on an ML115 G5 Quad Core here – this covers installing ESXi onto a USB disk.
http://www.techhead.co.uk/installing-vmware-esx-and-esxi-35-on-an-hp-proliant-ml115-g5-quad-core
Lets us know how you get on with running ESXi on your ML110.
Hope this helps,
Si
[Reply]
Hi Si,
So far I am loving it using the 250GB HDD that comes with it. When I get my USB key up and running Im going to iSCSI mount a 500GB mirror from a Thecus 5200Pro NAS and see how it runs.
With the full 8GB RAM what sort of load can these boxes take as part of what I want to do is play with Exchange 2007 and putting all the different roles on VMs is going to eat into resources!
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Hi Guys,
I have an ML115 G1 and am having problems getting esxi to run. I have managed to install an image onto a USB key and got it all booted fine. I could even connect from another machince, download the client and configure it. However it kept crashing – normally after about 15 mins.
So I am trying to use the boot cd to install onto the SATA drive, but keep getting the “unable to find a supported device” message.
Unlike the G5, there is no option for forcing SATA use or enabling VT.
Has anyone got any ideas – all will be appreciated.
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Hi Matt,
You’ll be suprised about how many VM instances you’ll be able to run on your ML110 with the 8GB mem and that much storage. I’ve never used any of the Thecus products before and would be interested in knowing what you think of them (performance, reliability, bang for buck, etc).
To give you an idea of what I’m running for my primary ESX server (stays on 24×7):
HP ML110 G5
HP e200 RAID controller
4 x 250GB SATA disks in a RAID 1+0 configuration (trying to get as much performance as I can get out of these SATA drives)
8GB of memory
ESXi 3.5 U3 – booting off of a USB key
VM’s running on this server:
1 x E2K7 server (W2K8)
1 x SQL 2005 (W2K3)
2 x W2K3
1 x W2K8
Although this is not a production machine I do have about half a dozen live mailboxes on it(I am helping a friend out whose small business is transitioning over to a managed Exchange service with a provider) so there is a little bit of activity happening on it pretty much all the time. I find the performance more than acceptable when doing testing, spinning up more temporary W2K3/8 instances, etc.
That said I do also run some VM’s on my other ML115’s and ML110 – but not 24×7 like the ML110 G5.
So you’ll be more than fine running E2K7 with the roles split out onto separate VM’s. My main E2K7 server has 1.5GB of memory allocated and is quite happy with that.
Cheers,
Si
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Does anyone know if I can raw device map a sata disk on a ML110 G5.
I’d like to the following setup but need to know it will work before purchasing:
ML110G5 – Esxi boot of internal USB, 1x 250GB SATA for guest OS and 1 x 1TB sata – I’d like to pass through the 1TB to a virtual file server.
Thanks
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Im Bomb
How to New installCard Serial port Compatibility ESX What is name and Model For HP110G5
Thankyou
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FYI;
I’ve install also ESXi (in past time also ESX 3.5 for my testlab) on my new hp ml 110 G5 and it works great. I’ve attached 4 disks at the controller (200). No compatibility issues during the installation. The procedure takes around 10min and you can access to a finished esxi environment. Booting of VM-Files is also very fast.
ESX-Testlab
I’ve running also 2 ESX with an additional vCenter and BackupServer virtualized in VMWare Workstation 6.5 and it works great.
best regards,
A.F.
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I have two ML110 G5 servers and want to max out the RAM in both. Does the Corsair XMS2 RAM definitely work with these machines? Is the motherboard generic on all that where produced.
I can max out the RAM for £140 and want to make sure I am buying the right thing before I go ahead.
I intend to install Server 2008 Enterprise with 2 or 3 more virtual server to run Exchange and Terminal Services.
Thanks.
Gareth
[Reply]
Kiwi Si Reply:
March 3rd, 2009 at 1:40 pm
Hi Gareth,
I’ve used the Corsair XMS2 6400 DDR’s in both my ML110 & ML115 (G4 & G5) lab servers without any problems. Though as Peter correctly points out these are not ECC so if these servers are going anywhere near a production environment then I strongly recomment going with memory with ECC (just to be on the safe side).
The Kingston deal that Peter mentioned sounds good especially considering it’s ECC memory. Similar memory from Crucial is coming in at £58 + delivery.
I used to update a post with hot deals on memory and similar that I’d, or others, had come across. Did anyone find this useful and is there any value to starting it again?
Cheers,
Si
[Reply]
GAZZAband,
I have two ML115 G5’s which have been maxed out with memory. It’s the same memory as the ML110 G5 (DDR2 6400, 800mhz, ECC).
I bought Kingston Value Ram from Insight, two of the 2×2Gb DIMM kits at £44.83 each (I get free delivery and slight discount so it was actually less than that).
I don’t think the Corsair RAM you mentioned is ECC which is fine for the ML115 G5 but for a server it’s worth having especially as it’s cheaper too.
Here’s the link:
http://uk.insight.com/apps/productpresentation/index.php?product_id=KTEA05KSE
Product code is KTEA05KSE in case the link gets eaten.
Unlimited warranty too, but I think that’s fairly standard for branded memory now.
Peter
[Reply]
Kiwi Si Reply:
March 3rd, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Hi Peter,
Thanks for the information on the Kingston memory – looks good. How long ago did you order it as I just checked out the Insight site and it says ordered upon request (which kind of sounds like it may take a long time to arrive
)?
Thanks,
Si
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It has always said ‘ordered on request’ (I guess it’s not popular enough to be stocked) and to be honest it took about a week for it to arrive at Insight. After that I had it next day.
I ordered some last July and more in November.
Peter
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[...] intentamos instalarlo nos mostrará un mensaje de error. Sin embargo, y gracias a este artículo de Teachhead, vamos a modificar un par de parámetros en la BIOS que nos permitirán instalar VMware ESXi [...]
Just starting to look at VMware and this was a useful article, with some good links to elseware.
Point to note is that ESX 3i does not install if you set the hard drive controller in BIOS to RAID (using the standard onboard RAID controller (Adaptec 1430sa controller I think)), which is a shame as I also purchased 2 WD enterprise class disks to run a RAID 1.
I see the above posts show the E200 SAS controller as being OK with RAID though.
So for now I am going to try the USB install method and once booted up from that see if it will see the RAID 1 hard drives.
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I scored Dual E5410 ML150 G5 from ebay, it has 12GB of ram, also picked up 4 x 500GB SATA II drives.
I downloaded and test installed ESX 3.5U3 and ESXi 3.5U3 and both worked with motherboard SATA controller (in enhanced mode) and both found all devices fine (Network card, DVD-RW etc).
I also added Dell Perc 5i RAID card and configured all drives to RAID5. Works extremely well and it’s very fast.
[Reply]
Kiwi Si Reply:
March 14th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
Hi JMN,
Good to hear you had a smooth experience in getting ESX 3.5 and ESXi up and running. I haven’t used one of the Dell Perc 5i cards as yet though have heard they are a good option.
Si
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Hi all,
I have just got an ML110 G5, but having issues with ESXi and ESX. It doesn’t seem to recognise the NIC. Oddly XenServer does see it as a Broadcom BCM5722 so not sure why ESX doesn’t ?
Anyone else seen this or worked around it ?
[Reply]
Kiwi Si Reply:
March 14th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Hi Dazza,
This is strange. I’ve never heard of the onboard NIC on an ML110 G5 not being recognised. What BIOS revision are you running?
Cheers,
Si
[Reply]
Hi Si,
Proliant BIOS 015
Bios Version 0150715
Build date 07/15/08
I have popped an Intel Pro GT in and now all the software installs. Oddly once it has installed ESX recognises the onboard NIC and seems to use it fine.
I would however prefer not to have to use the Intel.
Cheers
Darren