ESXi5.5u2 install fail on new x240 m5 – failed to resolve circular relocation

The other day I ran into a strange issue. Just received a bunch of Flex Blade x240 for a Vmware cluster and trying to get ESXi installed I was stopped by the following message: Failed to Resolve circular relocation.

failed to resolve circular relocation

It happened on one server so I tried the next one and the next, same thing!

I opened a case with Vmware which resulted in the following KB:2050443 http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2050443

It seems like ESXi doesn’t support MMIO regions above 4GB.

It took me for ever to find the relevant IBM/Lenovo information. Eventually found it at https://www-947.ibm.com/support/entry/myportal/docdisplay?lndocid=MIGR-5096729&brandind=5000020 not thanks to Lenovo support!

So I made the following changes in my BIOS, from 64-Bit resource allocation: Enabled to Disabled. And MM Config Base from 2GB to 3GB.

You will find the above settings under the BIOS>System Settings> Devices and IO ports

I hope this helps.

#esx, #flex, #ibm, #lenovo, #server, #vmware

Jij 09:58 on 14/09/2015

Thanks a lot … You saved my day .. 🙂
Paul 16:16 on 23/09/2015

Thank you This saves us a lot of time.. 🙂
Ian 18:15 on 16/12/2015

Awesome. Sorted the issue on my two new x3650 M5’s
Lenovo support were driving me nuts before I found this.
- kitkatneko 16:55 on 17/12/2015
  
  I’m glad it helped!
Pavol Vrabec 09:06 on 15/01/2016

Thx! I just want to ask if after installation i need to change this options to default state??

Thanks 😉
- kitkatneko 10:58 on 15/01/2016
  
  No need to change it back. ESX won’t like it anyway.
Hicham 20:49 on 15/01/2016

It really help me to resole that issue very quickly.
Thx
ShawnShuan 12:49 on 23/02/2016

This was an odd issue, but this corrected my problem. I tried going to the VMWare link for the KB and got “You are not authorized to access this article. It may have been moved or the reference is out-of-date.”. Even if I am logged into my VMWare account I get that message. They must have removed the article which is weird.
ShawnShuan 12:52 on 23/02/2016

Please note that this issue also occurs with 5.5U3 as well as customized images by Lenovo.
- kitkatneko 17:31 on 10/03/2016
  
  It is more a default setting incompatibility rather than something to do with esx. This said, I would imagine old newer OS to take advantage of this as well…
zenchuk 05:22 on 06/04/2016

Thank You very much!
Winston Robandson 22:27 on 12/04/2016

Thanks, saved me downloading the tool.
ITGuy 03:32 on 03/06/2016
Thanky a lot. Had this issue with 5.5U3 (custom Lenovo Image).

But there is one “problem”: If you have ESXi 5.1 without this settings, and now you are upgrading, you have a vMotion compatibility problem for your fall-back szenario

HostA: esxi 5.1 (settings enabled)
HostB: esxi 5.5U3 (settings disabled)

During the upgrade be aware:
- vMotion From Host A to B is possible
- vMotion From Host B to A is not possible, after VM reboots
If you upgrade and don’t have to go back to the old Host, it works 🙂
- kitkatneko 11:46 on 03/06/2016
  
  I’ll have to check your findings in details but I have the feeling that vMotion would rely more on CPU instructions than MMIO. If I were you, I would definitely open a case with VMware to make sure, not being able to vMotion would mean the HCL to be broken.
  - ITGuy 05:32 on 08/06/2016
    
    I found the problem. Somone activated the EVC-mode on the cluster. The host for the update was taken out of the cluster.
    
    Sorry for the wrong information. HLC is not broken, it was just another EVC-mode configured
  - kitkatneko 21:34 on 08/06/2016
    
    change management again 🙂
longxiangyi 03:08 on 17/06/2016

I am Chinese,Thank you very much
Steven 15:53 on 27/06/2016

Wow. Thank you for your time and research into this issue. You saved the day!
Eddy 04:08 on 30/06/2016

Thank you very much!
vinay 10:08 on 26/10/2016

Thank you so much super article
Mi Fazebus 04:49 on 22/03/2017

Thanks a lot for this, I confirm LENOVO and VMware ISO’s of 5.5U3b fail with “Failed to Resolve circular relocation” and your solution works for me.
🙂
DMT 09:11 on 29/08/2017

This solution resolved the “Failed to Resolve circular relocation” error, however, my NICs would not get a connection after this or it was flaky on whether it worked or not. Set BIOS settings back and no error and NICs worked. However, now I intermittently get the original error when rebooting. Maybe it is the converged network adapter model we have installed.

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ESXi5.5u2 install fail on new x240 m5 – failed to resolve circular relocation