Anybody using asus b85m-e/csm board with ESXi ?

Having a little issue with esxi not detecting local storage on b85m-e/csm board for whitebox.

Tried 5.0.x 5.1.x 5.5.x and 6.0.0 beta 2 after adding realtek drivers into ISO nic is detected, but no matter what SATA ports I use storage isn't detected. Tried setting SATA to ide mode in BIOS as well, still no go.

Now, Windows 7 / server 2012 detects the drives fine and installs fine.. and so does Fedora 20.

Can't find anything on google regarding this yet.

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Comments

Essendon

BIOS update perhaps?

JeanM

Essendon, checked that too, came with 0806 , flashed to latest 0810.

ESXi installer shows no local drives on the "Select a Disk to Install or Upgrade" screen...

Asif Dasl

Is this post any use to you?

VMware Front Experience: How to make your unsupported SATA AHCI Controller work with ESXi 5.5

Other than that I can only think of using a StarTech 2 port 6GB/sec SATA controller card that is not officially supported in ESXi but the post above shows you how to use it. It's a Marvell 88SE9128 chipset.

PCIe SATA 3.0 Controller Card - 6gbps | 2 port | StarTech.com

JeanM

Asif Dasl - awesome, I'll give that a shot tonight after work.

JeanM

Ok, running lspci -v shows me it's seeing the onboard mass storage controller

/etc/vmware/driver.map.d # lspci -v | grep "Class 0106" -B 1
000:000:31.2 SATA controller Mass storage controller: Intel Corporation
Class 0106: 8086:8c02
/etc/vmware/driver.map.d #

Looking at the ahci.map file content it stops at 8086:3b2f line, so if I understood the article correctly I need to add a new line for my 8086:8c02 pci id?

regtype=linux,bus=pci,id=8086:3b2c 0000:0000,driver=ahci,class=storage
regtype=linux,bus=pci,id=8086:3b2f 0000:0000,driver=ahci,class=storage
/etc/vmware/driver.map.d #

Now, I looked at the content of the bootable iso , the SATA-AHC.V00 file contains stage.vtar When I try to extract the content of stage.vtar to modify the ahci.map I get

stage.vtar: The archive is corrupt error? I can see it's got the ahci.map file in it

stage.vtar\etc\vmware\driver.map.d - TAR archive, unpacked size 7,150 bytes

Asif Dasl

If you look at the last line of the article, it says if your SATA controller is picked up as 8086:8c02 and it does not work, then there is nothing he can do?

An alternative option is to get a StarTech.com PEXSAT32 Controller, it's less than ideal but at least you won't need another motherboard.

JeanM

Asif Dasl wrote: »

If you look at the last line of the article, it says if your SATA controller is picked up as 8086:8c02 and it does not work, then there is nothing he can do?

An alternative option is to get a StarTech.com PEXSAT32 Controller, it's less than ideal but at least you won't need another motherboard.

I thought you still had to modify ahci.map and add the 8086:8c02 line to it, since it's detected per lspci but isn't loaded because map file doesn't have specific record for it?

Asif Dasl

Yeah, I'm not sure now. There are comments for 8086:8c02 which say it's supported out-of-the-box but you don't seem to have it working. I thought you just edited the map if it wasn't listed but I'm not sure why it's not working for you..

You have the VIB added to a custom ESXi ISO using ESXi-customizer right? And VT-d is off in the BIOS too? If it doesn't work after that then I'd just get another controller on the supported list of the VIB.

JeanM

Asif Dasl wrote: »

Yeah, I'm not sure now. There are comments for 8086:8c02 which say it's supported out-of-the-box but you don't seem to have it working. I thought you just edited the map if it wasn't listed but I'm not sure why it's not working for you..

You have the VIB added to a custom ESXi ISO using ESXi-customizer right? And VT-d is off in the BIOS too? If it doesn't work after that then I'd just get another controller on the supported list of the VIB.

Yeah I've added the VIB for the NIC , I didn't add any vib for the controller though. VT-d I tried with it on and off, didn't make a difference in this case.

I'll play with it some more....

JeanM

Got it all working, 5.5.0 u1 and 6.0.0 beta2 both are running and onboard sata is detected after playing around with various bios settings and trying different iso's.

Asif Dasl

Cool, glad you got it working.. Did you have to use the VIB or no?

JeanM

Did not for ahci in the end. I did use a vib for the realtek nic, but ended up disabling the onboard nic in bios and added one of the intel pro 1000 4port nics once my low profile bracket arrived. This i7 4790 config is WAY more power efficient vs. the dual 5440 xeon that I have.

sleganor

... I've ran in this problem after swapping my old (dead) MoBo with a shiny new ASUS B85M-E. I just tried booting esxi 5.0.0 installed with the old MoBo, having little or no hope on a successful boot... But, surprise! Esxi went up immediately (...well, needed to disable UEFI secure boot first...) incredible !!!
...connected via vSphere Client to restart my VMs, and... no storage at all, not even for logs... I've played with BIOS settings but no luck... I am able to setup managment networking, but changes don't persist after reboot.

Can I ask you to post you current BIOS config, and help an unlucky man ?!?

Thank you!

Oh I managed to have everything up and running!
I have built a bootable USB drive from a custom ESXi 5.5.0 ISO.

I have used these tools:
https://vibsdepot.v-front.de/wiki/index.php/Sata-xahci#Direct_Download_links
https://vibsdepot.v-front.de/wiki/index.php/ESXi-Customizer
https://rufus.akeo.ie/

The ISO detected the ESXi 5.0.0 install and upgraded it adding support for the SATA Controller.
It took me less than an hour to figure out what to do, download the needed sw and put everything together

Thank you!

Bye.