IPMI drivers fail to load when ESXi is installed in UEFI Mode

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

When you install and start ESXi in UEFI mode, ESXi might fail to detect the presence of Desktop Management Interface (DMI) on some servers. DMI is used to retrieve the hardware information from SMBIOS.
As DMI is not detected, the ESXi host fails to detect the entry point of SMBIOS table and the IPMI driver is not loaded. The /dev/ipmi0 folder is not created. ESXi is unable to access IPMI.

The vm-support log displays entries similar to the following:

<Time_Stamp> cpu15:4686)Loading module ipmi_si_drv ...
<Time_Stamp> cpu15:4686)Elf: 1852: module ipmi_si_drv has license GPL
<Time_Stamp> cpu15:4686)module heap: Initial heap size: 16384, max heap size: 5562368
<Time_Stamp> cpu15:4686)vmklnx_module_mempool_init: Mempool max 5562368 being used for module: 21

<Time_Stamp> cpu15:4686)vmk_MemPoolCreate passed for 4 pages

<Time_Stamp> cpu15:4686)module heap: using memType 0
<Time_Stamp> cpu15:4686)module heap vmklnx_ipmi_si_drv: creation succeeded. id = 0x410008068000
<Time_Stamp> cpu15:4686)<6>IPMI System Interface driver.
<Time_Stamp> cpu15:4686)PCI: driver ipmi_si is looking for devices
<Time_Stamp> cpu15:4686)PCI: driver ipmi_si claimed 0 device
<Time_Stamp> cpu15:4686)ipmi_si: Unable to find any System Interface(s)
<Time_Stamp> cpu15:4686)ipmi_si_drv failed to load.
<Time_Stamp> cpu15:4686)WARNING: Elf: 2767: Kernel based module load of ipmi_si_drv failed: Failure <Mod_LoadDone failed>

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.1

Resolution

This is a known issue with ESXi 5.0 and ESXi 5.1 hosts.

To work around the issue, install and start ESXi in the legacy BIOS boot mode.

This issue does not exist with ESXi 5.5 hosts.

Additional Information

For translated versions of this article, see:

• 日本語: ESXi が UEFI モードでインストールされていると、IPMI ドライバの読み込みに失敗する (2066860)