Esxi installation woes

Goose · 19 Oct 2015 at 11:04

I'm totally new servers and VM's and whatnot and i've been trying to install Esxi but during the installation it says "nfs41client failed to load" and then informs me that no network connection is detected. I decided to test this by installing Xpenology/DSM and it all went fine, no issues with the network connection. I updated my motherboard's BIOS and checked to make sure than the onboard network controller was enabled, which it is.

Not sure where to go from here? FWIW my motherboard is an MSI H81I with a G3258 CPU.

Thanks

Deleted member 138126 · 19 Oct 2015 at 11:45

Probably no supported NIC on the motherboard. You'll have to find an Intel NIC to plug in.

https://communities.vmware.com/thread/513767

Craig321 · 19 Oct 2015 at 11:47

As above, it's likely to be the NIC isn't supported, I had that exact issue on an old desktop machine I converted into an ESXi server as it has a rubbishy on-board network card.

In the end, I used the older v5.1 update 2 which worked perfectly. They removed a bunch of driver support in v6.

Download: https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/details?downloadGroup=VCL-VSP510-ESXI-51U2&productId=285

Goose · 19 Oct 2015 at 15:02

Thanks for that, installing 5.1.0 now

I dont suppose you know of any idiot proof guides to creating/configuring Windows 8.1 and Xpenology VM's? I've tried reading through a couple of guides already but they've been anything but noob friendly.

Craig321 · 19 Oct 2015 at 15:17

There's nothing to it really. Upload the ISO to the ESXi data store, mount the ISO on the virtual machine's CD drive and start it up, then install Windows as normal.

Goose · 19 Oct 2015 at 15:19

Ah right. Is that the same for Xpenology too? According to this guide you have to a bit of mucking about with SSH, PuTTY etc which I have no clue about so I dont understand what it is we're doing with in that guide.

Also, is worth buying a compatible NIC in order to use Esxi 6.0?

Craig321 · 19 Oct 2015 at 15:22

Goose said:
Ah right. Is that the same for Xpenology too? According to this guide you have to a bit of mucking about with SSH, PuTTY etc which I have no clue about so I dont understand what it is we're doing with in that guide.

Also, is worth buying a compatible NIC in order to use Esxi 6.0?

If you want to run a NAS or something reliable, then yes, I would go for a decent ESXI 6 compatible card. If you're just tinkering, then I wouldn't bother.

Not too sure about Xpenology, that SSH stuff is probably to do with setting it up after install.

Give FreeNAS a try if you're after a simple NAS. I have that on my HP microserver and it works nicely out of the box with minimal setup and has a decent web interface.

leigh_boy · 19 Oct 2015 at 16:00

plenty of guides online on how to edit the image to add the drivers you needy

Craig321 · 19 Oct 2015 at 16:03

leigh_boy said:
plenty of guides online on how to edit the image to add the drivers you needy

True, but a massive pain! I tried it when I was attempting v6 on an old machine here.

Goose · 19 Oct 2015 at 16:48

Any idea if this is Esxi 6 compatible? I've tried looking on the list at vmware.com but it seems to hate me and produces no results when i search for anything.

GDL · 19 Oct 2015 at 17:31

Link

While it's for 5.1, I don't recall many changes that would stop support under 6.

It's only £8 so worth a punt.

EDIT: SCRATCH THAT.

It works on 5.1 out of the box, but not higher. You need to install the driver outlined in this link.

the-evaluator · 19 Oct 2015 at 19:26

The other thing that can cause that error is a lack of RAM. Not the most helpful error message in the world! I had the same problem trying to install ESXi 6 on an HP Microserver but once I shoved in more RAM it installed fine.

How much RAM has the box got?

Goose · 19 Oct 2015 at 19:39

GDL said:
Link

While it's for 5.1, I don't recall many changes that would stop support under 6.

It's only £8 so worth a punt.

EDIT: SCRATCH THAT.

It works on 5.1 out of the box, but not higher. You need to install the driver outlined in this link.

Thanks, I think I might just try and find a NIC that works with Esxi 6.0 out of the box. If I cant find one for a reasonable price then i'll get the one above.

the-evaluator said:
The other thing that can cause that error is a lack of RAM. Not the most helpful error message in the world! I had the same problem trying to install ESXi 6 on an HP Microserver but once I shoved in more RAM it installed fine.

How much RAM has the box got?

8gb.

GDL · 19 Oct 2015 at 21:08

Goose said:
Thanks, I think I might just try and find a NIC that works with Esxi 6.0 out of the box. If I cant find one for a reasonable price then i'll get the one above.

Pick up a HP one, I've not seen a HP nic not work. Ever.

Goose · 19 Oct 2015 at 21:12

I think I may have entirely misunderstood the functionality of Esxi. I wanted to run two VM's, one running Windows and one running Xpenology. However, I wanted the Windows VM to display on the Monitor/TV that is connected to server machine itself, i.e not in a console in the vsphere client on my desktop.

By the looks of things that's not actually possible?

leigh_boy · 20 Oct 2015 at 09:47

Craig321 said:
True, but a massive pain! I tried it when I was attempting v6 on an old machine here.

odd, never had issues my self, takes a few mins to add a drive and tell it to compile.

Little_Crow · 20 Oct 2015 at 09:50

Nope, as you've found ESXi is headless.
You could build a beefy windows box and run something like virtualbox on it, to run xpenology inside, but that seems pretty pointless

the-evaluator · 20 Oct 2015 at 09:56

It's possible - you'd need to have a second graphics card in the box and pass that through to the Windows VM.

Goose · 20 Oct 2015 at 10:47

the-evaluator said:
It's possible - you'd need to have a second graphics card in the box and pass that through to the Windows VM.

Would that work when using the onboard graphics as I currently am or does it have to be two separate discrete cards?

leigh_boy · 20 Oct 2015 at 11:17

i might be wrong but for pass through you need the essentials plus license. £600 if i remember rightly

Esxi installation woes

Deleted member 138126

Deleted member 138126