VMware ESX 3.0.2 only supports 64 Gbytes on X8440 Server Module

Problem

VMware ESX will only support up to 64 Gbytes per X8440 Server Module. However, the X8440 Server Module can support up to 128 Gbytes.

When editing the properties of a virtual switch, or adding a NIC to a virtual switch, an error pop-up might be displayed. The text of the error pop-up is as follows:

If more than 64 Gbytes is installed, VMware ESX will fail to boot properly, and will fall back to Service-Console-only mode. This failure can be identified by a message in /var/log/dmesg.

Example failure message:TSC: 3787907137 cpu0:0)ALERT: MemMap: EarlyInit:1535: No pages allocated to Node 2 -- big mismatch between BIOS and SRAT memory maps, or MTTR error, or user removed all memory from a node.

Impacted OS: VMware ESX Server 3.0.1 and later

Impacted Hardware: X8440 Server Module

Workaround

Remove DIMM pairs so that 64 Gbytes or less is installed. Note that at least one DIMM pair must be installed on each CPU node.