ASRock Z77 Extreme4-M Motherboard works nicely with ESXi 5.0
I'm still rather fond of how TinkerTry.com/vzilla turned out, but I realize that those buying new are likely to shop around for a Z77 based system with decent ESXi 5.0 function. While I cannot speak from first hand experience, I can say that this isn't the first time I've heard of the continued ESXi / VT-d success for ASRock motherboard buyers. See also TinkerTry.com/z77-vmdirectpath and the very useful comments below the post.
Here's 2 emails I received, published below with permission of the overseas author, with full name/email removed, and some URLs added.
Note also that the enthusiast had the right attitude going into this, stating I'm going for an Ivy Bridge setup. I know, it's brand new and can have risks.
We are, of course, entirely unsupported by going with motherboards not on VMware's HCL, but as we've also discovered, it can also work out pretty well, with considerable cost savings.
From: Karel
Sent: Saturday, July 14, 2012 5:12 AM
To: tinkererguy
Subject: Re: [TinkerTry] Windows Server 2012 Beta Essentials is availibleHello,
In april 15 I sent you a email from <> with subjet UPS working in Vsphere ?
There I told you that I was going to build my lab PC.
Well, I hope I can assemble my PC this weekend. I did a little ESXi on a HP Elite 8000 desktop.
No, I did not apply the patch.
Here is the PC I’m going to build:
Lian Li PC-V354B case
Asrock Z77 Extreme4-M Motherboard
Intel Core i7 3770 Boxed CPU
Corsair Dominator CMP32GX3M4X1600C10 32GB RAM
Areca ARC-1882i SAS RAID controller
2x Crucial m4 CT512M4SSD2 512GB SSD
Cooler Master Silent Pro M2 520W PSU
HP NC360T PCI-E 2port network adaptor (412648-B21)
HP v165w 16GB USB stickI also ordered a HP Microserver N40L to use as a backup/NAS for windows (normally Windows Home Server but will test with Windows server 2012 essentials.
Nice to hear that you got software for easy use of your Cyberpower UPS.
As a mentioned in april I have a few consumer UPS from APC and that is a real nightmare to let it work.
Keep up the good work.
Kind regards,
Karel
From: Karel
Sent: Saturday, July 21, 2012 3:21 PM
To: tinkererguy
Subject: Got my homelab working !Hey,
Today I finally got my server running.
Installed ESXi, then applied the patch of july 12 (with help from your update1 video, thanks).
Then installed Areca driver to let my 1882i work in ESXi.
I will contact Areca because the latest driver (2011) let my 1882i see as a 1880i model.
And my Crucial M4 512 SSD is recognized as a non-SSD.
The Asrock motherboard is great, even Vt-d works.
The 50GB is a iSCSI LUN on my Synology DS1010+ NAS.
BTW, installed Win server 2012 essentials on my also new HP Microserver N40L. During install I saw also a 2012 Storage server. Can’t wait for that too.
Kind regards,
Karel
All Comments on This Article (29)
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/960600#answer-466394
points the finger at HTTPS Everywhere 3.3.1 add-on, for example. I dunno, just throwing an idea out there.
Phew, glad you got by it, thank you for the heads-up, will report to Disqus. Any chance you have an add-on that could be related to the behavior? Don't take it as an insult, just that I'm expecting Disqus will ask me (I'm unable to replicate any login issues on my Firefox 24). If you'd much rather play with ESXi than deal with Disqus, I completely understand, don't bother replying, no worries of course.
and mine ;) http://www.keymoo.info/trading/archives/2631
Disqus. Turns out it works fine in IE, but not in Firefox 24
Here's a much newer Haswell home build, but it has the 32GB maximum ram limitation:
http://www.vladan.fr/haswell-esxi-whitebox/
For after ESXi is installed, adding additional NICs, there's many resources:
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1034782
http://www.vmguru.nl/wordpress/2010/03/add-additional-drivers-to-esxi/
For injecting NIC drivers into the install ISO itself prior to install, here's one approach:
http://www.v-front.de/p/esxi-customizer.html
that sure is simpler than the "Prior to a new ESXi installation" technique here:
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2005205
Not sure about support, but of course, home labs generally have no support anyway.
When you say "Cant log in with my name for some reason", I'm unclear what you're logging in to.
No the NIC drivers are not included by VMware (or WIndows 7 on bare
metal). It may be possible to slip them into the ISO, but I already have
some NICs to use so I didn't bother. Cant log in with my name for some reason
Z87 Extreme3 works great too.
Honestly, I haven't researched this in nearly a year, and just don't know for sure. I'm sorry zaki!
HI Paul,
In the picture I see that your CPU doesn't support FT. I'm buying this mobo to test esxi features. Is this issue due to the CPU or mobo
Also interesting to note that the Site Survey tool is from Nov 2011, quite old at this point:
http://www.vmware.com/download/shared_utilities.html
Not a simple topic, eh?
http://communities.vmware.com/thread/322874
Thanks Vancrof, you make a good point, I need to point this out to folks trying to learn/try FT at home (for me, I only have one ESXi 5.1 box at the moment).
Thanks :-)
I approved your post (I have to approve all posts that contain URLs to be sure they aren't spam), and made a screenshot of the Site Survey results for you: http://tinkertry.com/files/vZilla-Site-Survey.png
Hi Paul!
Are you check your system if it support vMotion and FT with this link:
http://www.vmware.com/support/sitesurvey/help_2_5_3.html#install
Regards
sorry mi english is not good! :s
That is great, thank you for the ATI+ASRock success story!
Just reporting to say I've managed to get GPU passthrough to work on this motherboard after disabling some onboard sound/video features.
For more details, see my post here: http://communities.vmware.com/message/2117003#2117003
Fixed (just the slightly wrong picture, all the links and descriptions were correct).
This is great information. Can you share your source(s) with us, would love to read more about this.
Wow, so sorry, want to fix that asap, can you point us to the exact model you have, right on ASRock's site (and confirm if their pictures are accurate)?
http://www.asrock.com/mb/index.asp
@kthree. GPU passthrough is not yet a stable feature with VMWare, Just a few GPU cards are working fine on other brands then Asrock.
Nice to see my email. This is indeed a nice motherboard. (picture above is the ATX version, not the m-ATX) I haven't tried GPU passthrough yet, USB works fine.
I also have the Z77 Extreme4-M and have had success with it passing through an IBM M1015 and other various cards in ESXi 5.
However, seems like this board have issues with GPU passthrough, searched around but I cannot find any success stories involving ASRock boards with GPU vt-d in ESXi. Though it is confirmed to be working with Xen.
I remember you posting about GPU passthrough a few months back and wondered if you had any success?
Paul Braren | TinkerTry.com
Of course, Disqus Support has asked me to send you this troubleshooting boilerplate for Firefox, just in case you happen to have Avast! Online. Please don't take offense, and I'm just the messenger, I completely understand that you may not wish to take any of these steps. I should also point out that my site still allows unregistered users to make submissions, although it's a lot clearer/cleaner to follow the existing wonderful Disqus threads already under MooTrader. I suppose using another browser for commenting via Disqus is by far the easiest option for now. FYI, generally the only moderating I do is for submissions that have URLs, other posts show up nearly immediately along the top right of my entire site.
Again, so sorry for the Firefox issue, thank you for hanging in there!
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