Installation of Vmware ESXi 4.0 on GA-MA785GM-US2H
Since I was using XenServer for my Virtual environment for quite some time and there was no issues when it comes on HCL for clone PC, I assumed that it will be same as for ESXi. I bought a new hardware to install EXSi 4.0 with the following specs:
- Motherboard – Gigabite GA-MA785GM-US2H(http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Spec.aspx?ClassValue=Motherboard&ProductID=3141&ProductName=GA-MA785GM-US2H)
- AMD Phenom II X2 545 (http://products.amd.com/en-us/)
- 1 Tb HDD
- 8 GB RAM
I downloaded the ESXi 4.0 installer from Vmware website and start installing it. But before it completes the installation, it gave me an error that the onboard NIC card is not supported and the installation is halted. I was so frustrated that I bought a new desktop just to test Vmware ESXi and its a complete failure. I do a searce on google if there has some workaround ti install EXSi 4.0 on my new desktop and I found this link (http://www.vm-help.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=1272). It is about on how to edit the OEM.TGZ on the installer files.
As a newbie for this kind of setup, It took me 5 days to successfully loaded the NIC driver in to the installer files.
Here are the detailed steps for this activity:
Note: All steps are based from http://www.vm-help.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=4
- Install Ubuntu server
- Download all files need
- Run the script – it will create the updated ISO file
- Burn to CD
- Install
After burning the ISO file to CD, I tried to install it to my new machine and it was a success. I thought that my ESXi machine works perfectly but I was wrong, when i tried to download the vSphere client from the server, it gets hanged. I search again on google for the posible cause of this issue and found out that for me to have a successful ESXi installation for this kind of motherboard, it is better to buy an Intel PRO 1000 NIC card. And since im so eager to deploy ESXi on my new machine, it tried to search an Intel PRO 1000 in Ebay and I got it for only 20 sgd.
After installation on the new NIC to my desktop, Vmware ESXi works like a charm. I never had any installation issues and im now enjoying using it.