Confused and Frustrated

[michelb]

I am attempting to create an ESX server on a Dell Precision 360 with 80GB IDE drive.

Esx installs just fine although no matter which work-arounds I used I could not get ESXi to install, kept erroring out with "nowhere to install to". - I do not understand the difference why ESX will but ESXi won't but that is not the question.

Having installed ESX, I have come up against the "no datastore" issue much discussed in previous threads with the conclusion that ESX datastores are not meant for IDE drives.Fair enough, but why does my Dell Dimension ESXi box trundle along quite happily with ESXi installed on a 250GB Sata drive (in IDE mode) with one datastore on said SATA drive and a second datastore on a 60GB IDE drive? - that is the question.

BTW-yes, I had to use the INSTALL-TO-IDE work-around to get the Dimension box to work.

Results of fdisk -l on ESX box

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/hda1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux

/dev/hda2 14 650 5116702+ 83 Linux

/dev/hda3 651 719 554242+ 82 Linux swap

/dev/hda4 720 9964 74260462+ 5 Extended

/dev/hda5 720 973 2040223+ 83 Linux

/dev/hda6 974 9964 72220176 83 Linux

Results of vdf -h

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted On

/dev/hda2 4.9G 1.3G 3.3G 29% /

/dev/hda1 99M 27M 68M 29% /boot

none 132M 0 132M 0% /dev/shm

/dev/hda5 2.0G 34M 1.8G 2% /var/log

/vmfs/devices 33M 0 33M 0% /vmfs/devices

OK, so where has hda6 gone in the vdf -h query?

Any answers please????

[RParker]

Having installed ESX, I have come up against the "no datastore" issue much discussed in previous threads with the conclusion that ESX datastores are not meant for IDE drives

True.

but why does my Dell Dimension ESXi box trundle along quite happily with ESXi installed on a 250GB Sata drive (in IDE mode) with one datastore on said SATA drive and a second datastore on a 60GB IDE drive

ESX is an ENTERPRISE product, not a desktop or personal product. It's intended for performance, not just a simple VM host, therefore SATA and IDE were never meant to work with ESX.

If ESX 3i works, then why not simply use that? Have you tried contacting VM Ware and asking them why they don't support IDE/SATA drives?

[michelb]

I appreciate and respect that.

My (somewaht ideological) question is: What is the difference between ESX & ESXi in terms of the behaviour, ie. WHY does ESXi allow creation of datastores on IDE drives and ESX not. If purely for design/application/sales reasons then there must be a workaround.

Please do not misunderstand me, I think VmWare is perhaps one of the best things since sliced bread was invented, but if ESX will support hardware that ESXi doesn't, and ESXi will support functionality that ESX doesn't, why not combine the two and stop d.....g around.

I say this out of the deepest respect for the guru's who came up with the idea and the genius's who understand the way this works but having driven myself nuts trying to get either/or to work across multiple system types I started getting a bit fed up trying work-arounds around work-arounds.

That being said I do still have 3 or 4 successful implementations running.

Apologies for the rant, spent most of the last week trying to get ESX or ESXi running on 3 different systems.....