Get a 2GB thumb drive and plug it into one of the USB connectors (is there an onboard USB connector on the motherboard, or on top of the hot-plug drives? if so, use it), install ESXi onto it, then reconfigure the BIOS to boot from the USB drive.
We did it on a Dell R400, using the RAID-1 drives as the VMware datastore. Use vSphere 4.1 Client to manage it; creating and managing VMs is a breeze. On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 7:47 PM, Moe, Justin <[email protected]> wrote: > Greetings! > > What I’m looking at is a PE2950 with the boot drive(s) in a RAID 1 > configuration on a PERC6. > > Right now, the machine has an old copy of Debian etch running VMServer 1.x, > so for obvious reasons, we need to upgrade it. > > However, my concern is that if the new VM platform isn’t quite what we need > (it’s a toss up between ESXi 4.1 and ProxMox), I don’t want to nuke our > current install, which has proven to be solid. > > The only idea I can come up with, aside from finding a pair of SAS drives > to ‘borrow’ for this experiment, is to: > > > 1. Remove both drives from the RAID 1 > 2. Take the secondardy drive and put it in the primary slot, but leave > the primary drive out of the array > 3. Do the install, and if it turns out that the new setup isn’t what we > needed, swap the drives back, reimport the config from the primary drive, > and let it rebuild the array. > 4. Try this procedure again later during the next maintence window with > a different virtuilzation solution. > > > On paper, this seems like it would work, but I throw myself on the mercey > of those who have more experience with these cards or advice or suggestions > on a safer way to do this (or something similar). > > Justin > > > > _______________________________________________ > Linux-PowerEdge mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.us.dell.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-poweredge > Please read the FAQ at http://lists.us.dell.com/faq > -- JONATHAN B. HOREN Systems Administrator UAF Life Science Informatics Center for Research Services (907) 474-2742 [email protected] http://biotech.inbre.alaska.edu
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