ESXi installation on IBM / Lenovo Servers with SD Media Adaptor

IBM/Lenovo now supports installation of ESXi on SD-Card in some of there models, like the IBM / Lenovo x240 M5 Compute node. When using this option, you have to do some changes i the Bios / UEFI settings, and you may oalso have to do some configuration of the SD Media Adaptor and is done thru the IMM CLI, there is at the moment no GUI for this.

The UEFI / BIOS is this:

• Set Embedded Hypervisor as the primary boot device. In the Setup utility for your system:
• – Set Boot Manager > Add Boot Option > Generic Boot Option to Embedded
• – ​​Go to Boot Manager > Change Boot Order and set Embedded Hypervisor as the first item in the list.
• Disable PCI 64-bit resource allocation. In the Setup utility for your system, set System Settings > Devices and I/O Ports > PCI 64-Bit Resource to Disabled.
• Set the memory-mapped I/O base window to 3 GB. In the Setup utility for your system, set System Settings > Devices and I/O Ports > MM Config Base to 3 GB.

For further configuation information like:

• Installing the SD Media Adapter
• Configuring the VMware vSphere ESXi preload
• SD Media Adapter modes of operation
• Initializing an SD card in the SD Media Adapter
• Creating drives on the SD card

See the document here: http://public.dhe.ibm.com/systems/support/system_x_pdf/dw2abms3.pdf

Update:

This settings may also apply when using USB Sticks.