I acquired another HP ML350 G6 server.
Since there has been a number of updates since the last time I decided to beat my head against the metaphorical wall; I downloaded and installed VMware-ESXi-6.5.0-Update2-9298722-HPE-preGen9-650.U2.9.6.8.3-Sep2018 Everything went well until; I tried to use the on-board RAID card a SmartArray P410. Scanning for storage took an extremely long time, it did find the storage, and during the creation of a volume it took a really long time. Again the host would not shutdown.
I did a clean install of the "generic" 6.5.0u2 and all is well. Except, vCenter reports it has a fan failure. It doesn't see a "System fan 3". I should say this machine is a single CPU system, and doesn't have all of the fans that a dual CPU system sees. I will attempt to plug 5 wire fan in there and see if the error goes away.
Interestingly 6.7u1 will NOT install on a machine with Xeon 55xx series CPU's. In v6.5 one gets a warning and continues. In v6.7 one cannot continue. On an HP DL380 G7 with a Xeon 56xxx series CPU, v6.7 gave a warning but did install. I later upgraded the CPU in the ML350 from an e5520 to a l5620 and ESX v6.7 did install fine.
FYI, my current vCenter is on v6.5u1 build 8667236; it will not accept an ESX v6.7u1 build 10302608. I also tried on different vCenter build 9451637, and got similar results. It goes all the way through the motions, and errors out at the end saying cannot start vpxa.
Also I cannot update my existing vCenter. Going through the upgrade process it simply fails without any useful information. I haven't dug through the logs to find out why. Changing the root password and a clean reboot did not help.
I also have a HP DL380 G7, when attempting to install VMware-ESXi-6.5.0-Update2-9298722-HPE-preGen9-650.U2.9.6.8.3-Sep2018, I was greeted with a purple screen. Research shows that it is the ILO driver. Others have gotten around it buy extracting different drivers, and repackaging the install. I haven't had the time or ambition to go down that road yet.
