Recently I ran across an issue installing ESXi on an HP DL380p Gen8. The VMware ESXi ISO image does not have the latest NIC and RAID Controller drivers to allow for install. The HP packaged VMware ESXi ISO has the proper drivers, but it is an older ESXi build. When you patch the HP VMware ESXi ISO with a newer build, it overwrites the NIC and Smart Array RAID controller drivers so you break the installation. Below is how the issue was resolved.
Use the HP ESXi Media named 5.0_U1_Jun_2012_ESXi_HD-USB-SDImgeInstlr_Z7550-00779.iso found at https://h20392.www2.hp.com/portal/swdepot/displayProductInfo.do?productNumber=HPVM09
This will have the proper onboard Broadcom NIC drivers, and the P421i RAID controller drivers. However this is an older build of VMware.
Using the VMware Powercli install the 4 following bundles, and don’t reboot like it instructs you to do after each bundle. Otherwise it will break the installation.
You get the tg3 (Broadcom) and hpsa (HP Smart Array) drivers from www.hp.com/support. Type in DL380p under drivers and support, then chose the server. Select vSphere 5 as the OS. The drivers are available from the HP site. The TG3 driver has to be extracted from the parent zip. The two VMware builds are found at http://www.vmware.com/patchmgr/findPatch.portal
Upload all 4 ZIP files to a VMware datastore, then proceed with the following commands changing the path to match the path to your datastore and the IP address to the ESXi server.
esxcli –server=192.168.1.2 software vib install –depot /vmfs/volumes/vmfs02/ESXi500-201204001.zip
esxcli –server=192.168.1.2 software vib install –depot /vmfs/volumes/vmfs02/ESXi500-201206001.zip
esxcli –server=192.168.1.2 software vib install –depot /vmfs/volumes/vmfs02/tg3-3.123b.v50.1-offline_bundle-682322.zip
esxcli –server=192.168.1.2 software vib install –depot /vmfs/volumes/vmfs02/hpsa-500-5.0.0-offline_bundle-697362.zip
After all 4 are installed, then reboot. If something goes wrong you can reboot the server again and when it says “Loading VMware Hypervisor” at the console hold Shift + R at the iLO console or physical console. This will ask you if you want to roll back to the prior version of the hypervisor. Choose yes and try again.
References:
http://communities.vmware.com/message/2071236
http://bit.ly/OK6qxY
