Squishnet

VMware ESXi – Boot from SATA drive

Posted on 01 December 2008

Most of the documentation you see indicates you cannot boot VMware ESXi from a sata or ide drive.  But you can.  I was installing ESXi v3.5 on a Dell Poweredge 830 with 4 SATA drives and the onboard SATA controller (non-raid).    During the install I got the error “Unable to find a supported device to write the VMware ESX Server 3i 3.5.0 image to” .  Getting it to work was actually pretty quick and painless, after I found help on vm-help.com.

1. At the error screen during the install hit Alt-F1

2. This will drop you at the command prompt.  Login with user root and no password.

3. Naviagate to /usr/lib/vmware/installer/Core and edit TargetFilter.py   (path case sensitive)

4. vi TargetFilter.py and look for the def IDEFilter(lun) section.

5. Modify line:

return interface.GetInterfaceType() == ScsiInterface.SCSI_IFACE_TYPE_IDE
to
return interface.GetInterfaceType() == ScsiInterface.SCSI_IFACE_TYPE_ISCSI

6. Save the file (esc :write :quit or esc :wq)

7. Back at the console type install. Install will start, but may still have an error. At the error type Alt-F1 the login, run install, and Alt-f2 to accept.

Source:
Vm-help.com