Dear VMware users,
During the memory upgrade, from 16 to 32GB, ESXI refuses to boot up. The OS hangs on the message; "Starting VMkernel Initialization".
The problem is easy to solve (the system starts normally), by removing the added memory. At this moment, I thought of two potential problems, namely broken memory, or a broken motherboard memory slot.
Therefore, I tried the following;
- The motherboard BIOS indicates it has 32GB memory
- Swapped RAM in another slot
- Memtest86+ succesfully completed multiple passes overnight
I am out of ideas. Where can I look for the problem?
I'm running an ESXi 5.1 host on this system;
- SuperMicro X9SCM-F motherboard
- Intel Xeon E3 1220V2 CPU
- Kingston KVR13E9/8i ECC non reg memory, 4x8GB
- IBM M1015 flashed to IT mode
- Seasonic G-serie 360 watt
Disks are as following
- No-name 1GB USB 2.0 stick (bootable medium for ESXi)
- Samsung 840 Pro 256GB SSD (datastore)
- Couple of hard disks, attached to the IBM
The BIOS is the latest version. I also tried mounting 3x8GB sticks. This didn't work either, I got exactly the same error.