Guys, I'm struggling with ESX6 installation on HP DL380Gen9 (brand new servers). I have several of those, they all behave the same.
Upgraded with 2015.06 Proliant Support Pack (BIOS 1.40, ILO 2.20 - later upgraded to v2.30 Oct2015 without change, SmartArray B140i don't remember which version but latest possible, there was no change from June till today). CPU 8core E5-2630 v3, quad-port integrated Gigabit ethernet 331i, 128GB RAM (8x 16GB modules, they are ok), boot from 16GB SD card. Today I uploaded onboard NICs to latest firmware dated 01/Oct/2015, no change.
I installed two dual-port 10Gbit adapters in each server. Brocade BR-1020, all four ports are connected with twinax DAC to Brocade MP-8000e switch in plain simple Ethernet mode, nothing fiber-channel, FCoe, DCB here. When system boots up, Brocades show Adapter Firmware Version (Option ROM Version) 2.2.0.1 : I guess this might be problem, I'm trying to investigate how to update it but so far I found info "driver uploads newest firmware".
No matter what I do, I can't succeed ESX6.0b, 6.0 Upd1 or HP Custom ESX6.0 images to start installation. They all crash second later after displaying "Initializing Storage Stack", see screenshots please. No dump, no PSOD, nothing, just bang reboot. If I disable BOTH Brocades in BIOS, I can install and run v6.0 without any issues from the same installation images, all three. I can manually install BR-1020 driver in running ESX (VMware Compatibility Guide: I/O Device Search), but after enabling adapters in BIOS, it's all the same crash and ESX6 can NOT start and reboots exactly in the same place, the same way. I tried to delete all Brocade drivers from running system so that only net-bna would remain, no change.
Everytime it crashes, there is new "Uncorrectable Machine Check Exception" recorded in Integrated Management Log. Tried to find something reasonable on internet, related to Brocades, but failed (lots of generic stuff).
I probably tried all settings in BIOS. I intentionally flipped every Performance Option there is, set servers to High Performance Mode without any C-States as I found it in some HP discussions, disabled onboard SmartArray B140i, disabled PXE boot from network cards, there really is very little - if any - I haven't touched in BIOS. Of course loaded system default and manufacturer default settings, nothing helps me at all.
Now the news : ESX5.1 and ESX5.5 both install and run flawlessly on the same servers, adapters, firmware and BIOS settings. Without single glitch. It's ONLY v6.0 that makes problems. ESX5.1 was running there for about 2 weeks, so there is nothing wrong with the hardware. I can easily push 2GB/s from iscsi storage through two 10Gbit ports without missing a beat all day long.
Any ideas what to disable / change so I could use ESX v6.0 ? I'm overlooking something very easy and obvious.
images : VMware-ESXi-6.0.0-2494585-HP-600.9.3.30.2-Jun2015.iso
VMware-VMvisor-Installer-6.0.0.update01-3073146.x86_64.iso
and I already deleted the original VMware 6.0.0b which I don't remember what it was