Installing ESXi 4.1 on Cisco UCS B series server throws the error: “vmkctl.HostCtlException: Unable to load module /usr/lib/vmware/vmkmod/vmfs3: Failure”

I ran into an interesting error a few months ago while deploying a new Cisco UCS B series infrastructure with B200 M2 and B440 M1 blades.  As some of you may know, there are Cisco packages of VMware ESXi 4.1 available for download but as I browsed through the downloads section and was only able to find VMware ESXi 4.1 but not ESXi 4.1 Update 1, the thought of trying to use a regular package to see what happens crossed my mind and this post serves to demonstrates what happens.

Problem

You’ve downloaded the VMware ESXi 4.1 Update 1 package (VMware-VMvisor-Installer-4.1.0.update1-348481.x86_64.iso) from VMware’s site and proceeded to install onto the UCS blades:

Accepted the EULA:

The ESXi 4.1 installer begins to scan for devices:

… then quickly errors out with the following error:

vmfs3Module.Load()
File “/lib/python2.5/vmkctl.py”, line 11331, in Load
def Load(*args): return _vmkctl.ModuleImpl_Load(*args)
vmkctl.HostCtlException: Unable to load module /usr/lib/vmware/vmkmod/vmfs3: Failure

You are not able to proceed with the install and is forced to reboot.

Solution

The reason why you’re encountering this error is because the ESXi 4.1 Update 1 installer encounters a device it doesn’t have a driver for and fails without recovering. I’ve spoken to Cisco about this and they say you can either slipstream an ESXi 4.1 Update 1 CD with the missing drivers or just use the available ESXi 4.1 ISO (VMware-VMvisor-Installer-4.1.0-260247_Cisco.iso) provided by Cisco to install ESXi 4.1 onto the blades, then update them afterwards.

I didn’t want to go through the hassle of slipstreaming so what I ended up doing was install ESXi 4.1 onto the blades then used vCenter’s Update Manager to update the build from 260247 to 433742).