ESXi 5.5 boot issues with an IBM x3650 M2 2U server

[VR Bitman]

As a part of a home laboratory, I am building a 3-node ESXi cluster.
One of these nodes is an IBM x3650 M2 2U server with 8GB RAM (for now) and 2x Intel Xeon E5504.

As the title says, this server seems to be very picky about what to boot from and how.
My goal is to install ESXi 5.5 onto an internal USB pen drive and then, of course, have the server boot off it.

I burned my ESXi 5.5 iso image onto a DVD, but the server refuses to boot off the disc.
Next, I prepared a bootable USB drive with the same iso image; the server boots off it and allows me to install it onto the internal USB drive, but it won't boot off the internal drive automatically, no matter which file I tell the BIOS to point to.
However, if I press F11 during POST to bring up the boot menu and select the internal drive, it boots up correctly.

Assuming I need to update EFI, I have downloaded the official IBM tool called Bootable Media Creator and created an iso image with firmware updates, which I then burned onto a DVD. To my disappointment, the server boots off this disc but then displays the error "no suitable video mode found" and refuses to continue.

As a last attempt, I have inserted 2x 146 SAS drives and then created a single virtual drive (RAID 1). I tried to install Windows Server 2K8, but after creating and formatting the primary partition, Windows complains that it's unusable because the controller doesn't recognize it as bootable - this is even though I made sure that the virtual drive is set as a bootable device.
If I can install Windows (or another operating system), it would at least be possible to run IBM's ASU (Advanced Setup Utility), which allows the user to change the EFI parameters.

So far I haven't had any luck.
Does anyone have any experience with this particular server?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[VR Bitman]

Solved.

I disabled legacy video support in the BIOS setup menu, created a new bootable ISO with a text-based UI using the Bootable Media Creator, and mounted it forcefully via the IMM.
I was then able to update both the IMM and UEFI firmwares with success.

Now the server boots correctly off the internal USB drive.

 

[flynnibus]

can you be more specific in terms of your solution? You had to get the firmware updated before esxi would boot, yes?

I'm not following what your steps were and what updaters you used to update the firmware. I'm having a similar problem where the esxi iso won't boot the server.

 

[VR Bitman]

I'm sorry, I didn't have time to post all the details. It was a long afternoon. I'll write a detailed post on my blog soon.
But yes, I had to update the firmware before ESXi 5.5 would boot off USB. Note that IBM isn't officially supporting ESXi 5.5 on older servers; it seems to work fine but more problems could arise further down the road.
As I mentioned, I used the Bootable Media Creator, a free tool developed by IBM: IBM Bootable Media Creator (BoMC)
Run it, and the wizard will guide you to create a bootable ISO containing all the updates.

Good luck.

 

[flynnibus]

Yes, I found my way to the BoMC from the bits you mentioned. I tried letting it do it all auto by selecting my machine type.. but after the Grub menu it failed to boot saying 'error: no suitable video mode found' and said 'booting in blind mode' but then did nothing.

I had selected the text based UI in BoMC.. but not sure which way to try next

 

[VR Bitman]

flynnibus, my post wasn't very detailed, but I did mention all of my steps.
Again, I had disabled legacy video support in the BIOS setup menu.
This will prevent the error you mentioned, which is the exact same error I mentioned in my first post.

 

[flynnibus]

flynnibus, my post wasn't very detailed, but I did mention all of my steps.
Again, I had disabled legacy video support in the BIOS setup menu.
This will prevent the error you mentioned, which is the exact same error I mentioned in my first post.

Thanks for the clarification - I had disabled that... but failed due to an err on my part. I changed it, but did not explictly 'save settings' before going to the boot menu and selecting the device to boot to. So simply... didn't save changes I'm waiting for the server to complete the IBM disc now and based on your experience looking forward to success with vmware update.

Thanks again for posting your problem/solution... google led me here and your post saved this ol' box