ESXi 6.x and HP G6 ML350 server...continued

This is an update for a previous post....

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.