Why I love ESXi

I've been tearing my hair out with a future build of ESX for a couple of weeks.   Now my system is decidedly NOT on the HCL.  It's one of my home-grown ESX 3.5 u2 systems - an Intel G33 motherboard, Q6600 CPU, 8GB of RAM, bunch of Intel 1000 Pro GT NICs.   To boot, I've been using an old-school QLA4010c (thanks qlogic for sending me the new QLE4062s and the cool 8042 10GbE converged adapters!).

OK - this system boots FINE under 3.5u2, but under... let's say... ESX.next, not so much.   NOTE - we're talking pre-release here, so don't extrapolate ANYTHING from this.

• During install, it would hang while loading the network drivers - I eventually isolated this to the Intel GT cards.   PTs, OK.   MTs, OK.   Interesting.  ?If I don't disable the onboard NIC, same deal - hang during install.   They all use the e1000 driver, but mental note - I'm using MTs and PTs going fwd.
• the internal SATA controller looked like it installed fine, but then looked like the MBR wasn't configured right - at the end of install, the HDD wasn't bootable.   I found this long ago with non-supported controllers, so poked around with this.
• So, the QLA4010c (and this seems to be true with the QLE4062 too) boot from iSCSI SAN wasn't working right (BIOS loads, drives found, but don't show in the install screen).

I poked, prodded.  I tore my hair out.   I was stuck with no bootable controller/drive combo, and was considering a trip to Fry's for another MB whose SATA controller I would know would work (an older nvidia MB for example).

Then, I had an idea. 

I've used a bootable USB ESXi 3.5 image on my laptop, and suddenly thought - "why don't I just do that?"

A few minutes later with DD for windows and the dd image I had my ESX image on USB.

BTW - The always excellent Duncan's got a little post on how to build your USB key here: http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2008/07/29/esxi-35-update-2-on-a-usb-memory-key/

So, why am I so pumped on this?   It's more powerful than immediately apparent.

1. Simple.   The process of dd takes a few minutes, and configuring the system after boot is short and easy - faster and easier than the installable image
2. Portable.   I'm carrying it around with me now and am doinking around with ESX.next on the road on my laptop.
3. Compatible.   All those driver issues I was struggling with?  NON EXISTANT this way - I've got my iSCSI HBAs, my NICs, and I'm up and running.

Nothing earth shatteringly new here, but rather a real "aha" personal moment where the power of this technology and approach. 

I'd strongly recommend that anyone out there who manages a VMware environment play with this.   If you're used to installing systems off DVDs, you might just find yourself considering a new way.

Comments

[Duncan]

I had the same issues with the next version.... For some reason the driver doesn't load and hangs the installer completely. So I dropped in an old 3com card I still had.

[Stu from vinternals]

Or you could always just PXE boot it my friend http://www.vinternals.com/2008/01/pxe-boot-esx-3i.html - one reboot and you're back to 3.5 ;-)