On Mon, 8 Mar 2021, Gregory P. Ennis wrote:
On Sun, 7 Mar 2021 at 18:39, Pete Biggs <pete@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sun, 2021-03-07 at 11:17 -0600, Gregory P. Ennis wrote:
Everyone,
We have migrated a platform to a Centos 8 host using kvm guest
machines
Recently I tried to copy one of the guests to the external SD card
on
the back of the Dell R730xd, but I have not been able to get the
Centos
8 host to recognize the SD card.
I can use DRAC interface of the R730xd to see that the SD card is
being
recognized and the status of the external SD slot is turned from
inactive to active when the card is inserted.
I have a nagging feeling at the back of my mind that that slot is
associated with the iDrac system and not the main board.
In any case doesn't that need a vFlash card not a standard SD/SDHC
card? From Wikipedia:
I think the SD card on the back of the IDRAC7 systems on the Dell 730xd
are
similar to this. They are accessible by the IDrac and dell software and
are
primarily there for emergency install of the hardware from known good
media. I believe that vmware has a module which talks to the card so
you
can install software in vm's from said known good media.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Simeon,
You have anticipated what I am trying to do. I have been using Centos
8 as a host on a 730xd machine, for some Centos 7 guests. With the end
of life of Centos 8 only 9 months away I decided to try to migrate
everything to vmware. I purchased a sister 730xd to use as a lab
computer, and am working on the skill sets necessary to migrate
everything to vmware. I have really grown to like kvm and am still
disappointed RedHat/IBM is backing away from Centos.
I certainly have not been able to get Centos 8 to recognize the SD
card, and have also not been able to get vmware on the sister machine
to recognize either the SD card in the back slot or even when I have it
plugged into a usb converter. The vmware problem is more likely
related to my lack of experience with vmware; this is my first time to
use it.
As was said above, the sd card on the back of the machine is ONLY for use
by the iDRAC. If you have iDRAC enterprise, it is not necessary to use it
to install vmware esxi or for that matter any OS. All you need to do is mount
the iso as a virtual disk using the iDRAC console. I do this all the time to
both upgrade/install esxi and install centos/Windows/whatever vm's.
Just do not try to mount the iso on a machine on a low bandwidth connection.
It will take forever. :-(
If you want to install vmware esxi on an sd card you need a isdm module.
Something like:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/PMR79-Dell-PowerEdge-R630-R730-R730xd-Dual-SD-Flash-Card-Reader-Module/233572427053?epid=1739290890&hash=item366200652d:g:YNQAAOSwBYhc3HPQ
Keep in mind that Dell recommends that you do not install esxi newer than
6.7 on an sd card. They stopped offering the isdm modules on 14th gen servers
with esxi 7.0 installed. They claim they see too many failures of the sd cards
with 7.0.
HTH,
--
Tom me@xxxxxxxxxx
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