A Weekend Of VMware Fun

I decided to do some work on my VMware lab box, namely installing the 2TB drive I picked up for the VMware Data Protection appliance, getting the appliance up and running, and installing 5.1 Update 1. I was thwarted in most of that due to a faulty motherboard. I’ve got the drive in, the appliance installed, and the update applied, but the ESXi box is down due to a bad motherboard. It gets stuck in an infinite reboot cycle when hyperthreading is turned on or when I push the system by bringing up the backup appliance. I’ve disabled hyperthreading and can get it to boot, but it still crashes under even minor load. It’s not a purple screen, it just drops, like the reset switch has been pressed. I think I’ve got it back up and running with hyperthreading disabled and only three cores active. We’ll see how long that lasts…

Looks like I’ll be opening a case with Asus on Monday morning to get the board replaced.