This blog was written by Kiran Devarapalli and Murugan Sekar from Dell Hypervisor Engineering team.
VMware ESXi 5.5 has been released and certified on Dell PowerEdge servers. Below we have captured some of the important points with respect to VMware ESXi5.5 Certified Dell Servers.
- Dell has highest number of configurations certified for ESXi5.5 (Server and Feature Certifications). Complete list of VMware certified Dell servers available at VMware HCL.
- Dell PowerEdge 11G and 12G servers are certified to work in both BIOS and UEFI boot mode.
- VM Direct Path IO (FPT) feature is certified and supported only on 11th Generation of Dell Servers. None of the 12G servers are certified for this feature. The existing list of VMware approved Passthrough devices are supported only on 11G Platforms.
List of Passthrough Devices supported from VMware as of today:
- Intel 82598 10 Gigabit Ethernet controller
- Broadcom 57710 10 Gigabit Ethernet controller
- Broadcom 57711 10 Gigabit Ethernet controller
List of Dell PowerEdge 11G servers certified for VM Direct Path IO Feature as of today:
Blade Servers:
- M610, M610X, M710, M710HD, M910, M915
Rack Servers:
- R910, R810, R710, R610, R510,R410, R815, R715, R515, R415
Tower Servers:
- T710, T610, T410
- Starting from ESXi5.5, VMware has introduced certification for SR-IOV feature. Below Dell servers are certified for SR-IOV and certification of remaining supported servers is currently in progress.
- M520, R620, R720, R720-XD, T620
- ESXi5.5 can be installed on HDD or SD Card. For a list of Certified SD cards on Dell Servers, refer to Table-2 in "VMware vSphere 5 on Dell PowerEdge and Storage Systems Compatibility Matrix" guide available at Dell support site.
- Dell PowerEdge VRTX is currently supported and certified only with ESXi5.1U1 and not supported with ESXi5.5. Shared PERC Driver, which is required for VRTX is not available for ESXi5.5 yet.