ESXi 4.1 Install, Cannot Create VMs

[ExcitedByNoise]

I'm having some issues with a whitebox install, which I'm sure is the cause of my issues. I my motherboard is an Asus P6X58D-E and I have a 1TB Western Digital drive attached to the ICH10R controller.

I initially tried to install 4.0 and 4.1 with no success directly to the drive. They always failed around 38% and on restart the hypervisor would hang at vfat initialization. So I decided to do a USB install, which worked fine.

When I start the hypervisorm, I go in and create a datastore without error using the 1TB drive. Once I try to create my first VM (for example named test) I get an error during creation that says "A general system error occured", then any subsequent VMs I try to create fails with error caused by file "/vmfs/volumes/xxxxxxx/test". I've tried this in both 4.0 u1 and 4.1.

Any advice on working around this or troubleshooting?

[DSTAVERT]

Go through the log files to see if you can see anything relevant. From the vSphere client File Menu / Export / System Logs.

Try deleting the datastore and recreating it. View the realtime error on the ESXi console ALT + F12 while you create a VM.

[ExcitedByNoise]

This is what I see in the log. I'm looking into these errors now.

Jan  6 18:40:39 vmkernel: sysboot: Executing '/sbin/configLocker'
Jan  6 18:40:41 vmkernel: 0:00:00:30.521 cpu0:4896)<3>ata2.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x1 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
Jan  6 18:40:41 vmkernel: 0:00:00:30.521 cpu0:4896)<3>ata2.00: (irq_stat 0x40000008)
Jan  6 18:40:41 vmkernel: 0:00:00:30.521 cpu0:4896)<3>ata2.00: tag 0 cmd 0x60 Emask 0x9 stat 0x41 err 0x40 (media error)
Jan  6 18:40:41 vmkernel: 0:00:00:30.523 cpu0:4896)<6>ata2: EH complete
Jan  6 18:40:41 vmkernel: 0:00:00:30.523 cpu0:4896)NMP: nmp_CompleteCommandForPath: Command 0x28 (0x41027f35a540) to NMP device "t10.ATA_____WDC_WD1002FAEX2D00Z3A0________________________WD2DWCATR2733550" failed on physical path "vmhba34:C0:T0:L0" H:
Jan  6 18:40:41 0x0 D:0x2 P:0x0 Valid sense da
Jan  6 18:40:41 vmkernel: 0:00:00:30.523 cpu0:4896)ScsiDeviceIO: 1672: Command 0x28 to device "t10.ATA_____WDC_WD1002FAEX2D00Z3A0________________________WD2DWCATR2733550" failed H:0x0 D:0x2 P:0x0 Valid sense data: 0x3 0x11 0x4.
Jan  6 18:40:41 root: configLocker /scratch is /vmfs/volumes/4d24effa-93bf1e1f-2ae6-0007e9102f15/.locker
Jan  6 18:40:43 vmkernel: 0:00:00:32.396 cpu0:4896)<3>ata2.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x3 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
Jan  6 18:40:43 vmkernel: 0:00:00:32.396 cpu0:4896)<3>ata2.00: (irq_stat 0x40000008)
Jan  6 18:40:43 vmkernel: 0:00:00:32.396 cpu0:4896)<3>ata2.00: tag 0 cmd 0x60 Emask 0x9 stat 0x41 err 0x40 (media error)
Jan  6 18:40:43 vmkernel: 0:00:00:32.398 cpu0:4896)<6>ata2: EH complete
Jan  6 18:40:43 vmkernel: 0:00:00:32.398 cpu0:4896)NMP: nmp_CompleteCommandForPath: Command 0x28 (0x41027f358140) to NMP device "t10.ATA_____WDC_WD1002FAEX2D00Z3A0________________________WD2DWCATR2733550" failed on physical path "vmhba34:C0:T0:L0" H:
Jan  6 18:40:43 0x0 D:0x2 P:0x0 Valid sense da

[DSTAVERT]

You can have a look through the SCSI sense codes KB article. There are several media errors listed. If you have a different drive I would try it. I still think this may be a disk controller hardware problem.

[ExcitedByNoise]

Just to follow up. I had resigned to my fate and accepted that it was the controller. I decided to install vbox instead, but the linux install also failed. Looks like that disk is bad. Swapping to another disk and testing worked just fine. Going to RMA the hard drive and try again.