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I initially bought a HP Proliant ML 115 server as a cheap test/lab server for VMware vSphere and miscellaneous rollout projects at work, but all of a sudden I needed it for some other project that required that I install Windows Server 2008 directly on the hardware itself.

As is the story with most HP Proliant servers, you should install it with the tools that HP provides. In the case of the ML 115, you can't use the normal SmartStart setup, but it's little cousin Easy Set-up CD.

The installation started fine, after running through the initial HP wizard, but when the time came to actually get the installation started it went all blue screened on me, complaining about nvstor.sys.
I knew that the Windows 2008 installation medium doesn't include support for the built-in nVidia NFP3400 SATA storage controller in RAID mode, but I wasn't running a RAID based setup on it anyway so that shouldn't cause the problem.

Next I tried installing Windows Server 2008 without using the Easy Set-up CD, in other words just plain old booting of the Windows Server 2008 installation CD and initially it seemed like it was running ok. Thats until it just stopped at 0% progress at the "Expanding files" section of the installation.

So, there I was. Using the HP tools, the installation ends in a big old BSOD, using "native" Windows Server 2008 installation it just stops without any indication on what might be wrong.

As it turns out, the solution was pretty weird. The HDD shipped with the server causes the problem (160GB NHP SATA). I have no idea how, but replacing it with another SATA drive and starting the installation again, with the Easy Set-up CD, fixed it.

The HDD shipped with the server makes the installation of Windows Server 2008 crash, replacing it with a "generic" Western Digital AV-GP 1.5TB SATA drive lets me install without problems.

Obviously the nvstor.sys driver shipped with Windows Server 2008 has problems with some drives, but not all. Imagine that a cheap server, that can run VMware ESX/ESXi right out of the box, can't run Windows Server 2008 with the HDD it came shipped with.

Now, how weird is that? Note that that wasn't tested with Windows Server 2008 R2, so the nvstor.sys file shipped with that version might not have the same problem. Also, I did not try loading newer nVidia drivers during the Windows installation procedure, because a) when using the Easy Setup CD you don't get the option to load third party drivers, and b) because after I figured out that changing the HDD helped I didn't want to try another manual installation.

Remind me again, why don't we just virtualize everything? In this instance, it would actually be easier (and quicker!) to install ESXi on the bare metal hardware, create a VM and install Windows Server 2008 in that instead of installing Windows Server 2008 on the hardware directly. How the world has indeed changed.

Update 10. March 2010:

After finishing the installation, I did run into another problem that quite possibly is also related to the nvstor.sys driver. Windows would fail in creating partitions, of the amount of space used by the partitions exceeded approximately 1TB in total.

Upgrading the server to Windows Server 2008 R2 fixed this issue, and I was able to utilize the full disk. This leads me to think that had I installed Server 2008 R2 from the get-go I would not have seen the installation issues with the original drive at all.

Maish Saidel-Keesing has revisited his previous post "Hot Add and "Need have have"" where he (like I did) pokes some fun at a rather strange error message in ESXi 4.0. Now that Update 1 is out, Maish tries again, this time with better results.

Read the whole post: "Need have have" - revisited.

I'm glad to say we don't need have have any more!

Over time the boot partition on a Windows Server 2003 installation might just turn out to be too small. There can be various reasons for this, but the fact remains that over time you will accumulate data on the boot drive that you didn't take account for when you set it up initially.

Luckily I run almost all of my servers in a VMware based virtualized environment, where it's easy to expand the the virtual disks. The problem is that Windows Server 2003 doesn't let you easily expand the boot volume, at least not without downtime. I've previously talked about using tools like GParted to expand the boot volume but there are easier ways to do it and prevent downtime at the same time!

All you need is love. No,wait, that's something else entirely! All you need is ExtPart. ExtPart is a lovely little 36KB tool that Dell has provided to expand partitions on Dell based servers and storage systems. It is a little known fact that ExtPart can do the job in any 32 bit Windows Server 2000 or 2003 based install (no 64 bit support, sadly), and in Server 2008 there are other methods of doing this.

Enough talk, lets get down to the business at hand.

1. Download ExtPart from the Dell download site
2. Expand your boot volume, either via the Virtual Infrastructure Client or via vmkfstools
3. Run ExtPart inside your VM to expand your boot volume to the new size

Thats it. The following screenshots outline the process very well, without having to guide you through each step. Have a look!

It can't get much simpler that this, honestly.

Nice little error message shown when trying to hot add a new HDD to a VM running on ESXi 4.0.

How much need have have do you need?

Addendum:

Clearly I'm not the first to notice this rather peculiar wording in ESXi 4. Maish Saidel-Keesing posted the same screenshot back in May 2009 in his post called Hot Add and "Need have have".

Read that post instead of mine, it also highlights what ESXi 4 is missing as well as poorly worded error messages.

Funny thing is that I can even remember reading Maish post back when it was published, but I don't remember seeing that weird error message. Oh well. :)

Thanks to Jase McCarty for pointing this out to me.

vmwarewolf.com has posted ESX PSODs

If you happen to search Google for one of the following phrases you might expect Google to return a list of official VMware Knowledgebase articles on the topic.

• crash debug screen
• machine crash screen
• ESX Server PSOD
• Purple screen crash report
• Decode purple screen error

I know this is a direct copy of some of that article, but it's an attempt to help out getting ESX Server PSOD ranked in Google. I'm sure I'll be forgiven for the verbatim copy/paste job.