Intel 82563EB Support

[ScottishCaptain]

Greetings to all.

I've recently been building a 8 core Xeon box to run ESXi on, specifically as a virtualization farm.

The motherboard (SM X7DWE) has three LAN ports;

- Two GLAN ports on the 82563EB Chipset (builtin)

- One GLAN port on the KVM/IPMI Management Card on a 82541PI chipset (pretty sure this one will work though).

Can anyone confirm if the 82563/82541 chips are supported in ESXi?

The only /slight/ confirmation I've been able to dig up is that Intel's source for the e1000 module used by ESXi (version 7.3.15) references both chips in e1000_hw.c. So, technically, according to Intel, the chips are supported in the sourcecode for the 7.3.15 version of the e1000.o module. This is somewhat speculative as I can't confirm if the e1000.o module shipping in ESXi actually supports said hardware, as I do not yet have the system.

If anyone could shed some light on this subject, I'd really appreciate it.

Cheerio.

-SC

[Dave_Mishchenko]

THe 82541PI is listed in the PCI ID file for ESXi (update 1 - I haven't looked at update 2). For supported NICs heres the list if you haven't seen it - http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi35_io_guide.pdf. I don't see the 82563EB listed. If you're doing this for production, you might want to review the supported systems http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi35_systems_guide.pdf. It would be best to stick with one of those systems. Or with SuperMicro you could pick a motherboard that comes in a supported server model.

My other concern with this motherboard would be what you plan to use for a storage controller. ESXi is able to recognise a number of Intel ICH* / ESB* storage controllers (they are not supported though). However, the drivers that ship with ESXi do not support any RAID functionality for those controllers.

PS - where are you getting the driver files from?

[ScottishCaptain]

where are you getting the driver files from?

For ESXi?

On OS X, it was just a matter of mounting the ISO file, finding the installation bzip, extracting that, mounting it, looking around for a file aptly named "binmod.tgz", extracting /that/, then digging out the relevant *.o module files. Some string && grep magic in the terminal yielded anything in readable plaintext, which led me to the original finding that the e1000.o module is indeed from Intel's Linux source, version 7.3.15 (which, as I said, the sourcecode supports the 82563EB). Above and beyond that, I was curious- I recognized Busybox right off the bat so I wanted to see just what sort of embedded system VMware cooked up.

Unless VMware's gone through the trouble of hacking up the 7.3.15 e1000 module and removing said support, I should think it would be in there.

If you're doing this for production

Not quite. It's a liquid-cooled workstation for my home use. The X7DWE is the only ATX board I could find that was remotely suitable for the system I wanted to build, pretty much specifically for ESXi.

If ESXi doesn't work, I don't really have any issues firing up Fedora, and chucking Server 2.0 on that instead (except for the fact that I despise the new web management UI, and ESXi has a certain elegance to it).

-Keven Tipping

[Dave_Mishchenko]

VMware updates drivers to make them work with the vmkernel and it not being listed in the PCI file would mean you would have to create a custom oem.tgz to add to your install.

Here are some other systems that have been tested with ESX / ESXi - perhaps one will be close to what you're looking for.

[ScottishCaptain]

I'm so confused.

Looking in the latest PCI_ID map file for ESXi 3.5 (or ESX 3.5i, wherever the "i" goes) in /etc/vmware/simple.map, the 82563EB *is* indeed listed as being supported by the e1000 module.

The 82563's PCI_ID is apparently 8086:1096, and it's in there- but I'm reading a lot of fuss about the drivers with the ESB2 chipset under /Linux/, which the e1000.o module is inevitably based on. So it may or may not work.

Anyways.

I guess we'll find out when I get the board and assemble the system /really/ quickly.

-SC

[analog4]

I'm interested in knowing if the 82563EB NIC works under ESXi 3.5.

Let us all know what you find.

Thanks.

[Erik_Zandboer]

Hi,

I think you might be confused because of the setup of ESX 3.5: You have the service console on one side, but the hypervisor on the other. The hypervisor has its own drives for hardware, and cannot be modified. So having a certain NIC supported in the service console of ESX 3.5, is no guarantee it will be supported by the hypervisor. And hypervisor support is the thing you want (for ESX to work through that NIC)

ESXi has only the hypervisor. As far as I know both hypervisors support exactly the same NIC hardware. I have seen many intel NICs, and all the ones I have seen work on ESX 3.x (allthough not all are supported by VMware!)

[TwinTuk]

Hello,

For me it worked fine until I upgraded from build 110271 to 120505

see my question :

Now only the second nic of two on the mobo seems to work.

Greets

[mikeasd]

Scottish

I'm considering the same setup as yours. Could you let us know please where you go to and if esxi will run on this motherboard

many thanks

mike

[tru]

see also http://communities.vmware.com/thread/173597?tstart=0&start=15

works for me on X7DWU

~ # uname -a

VMkernel localhost.localdomain 3.5.0 #1 SMP Release build-123629 Oct 15 2008 21:03:57 i686 unknown

08:00.00 Network controller: Intel Corporation Intel(R) 82575EB Gigabit Network Connection

08:00.01 Network controller: Intel Corporation Intel(R) 82575EB Gigabit Network Connection

eth0 work fine

but on X7DBR-3, eth0 refuses to function (on esxi only, without ipmi management), only eth1 works:

04:00.00 Network controller: Intel Corporation 80003ES2LAN Gigabit Ethernet Controller

04:00.01 Network controller: Intel Corporation 80003ES2LAN Gigabit Ethernet Controller

btw none of the supermicro are in the esxi HCL, they seem to be only supported for ESX