Dell SC1420's appear to limit CPUID information available to the OS and do not appear to present a BIOS option to the end user to enable/disable the 'feature'
In order to get ESXi to install/boot, you need to do a couple of things:
- When the ESXi bootloader appears, hit tab.
- Find vmkboot.gz and append nocheckCPUIDLimit, before the ---
- Find vmkernel.gz and also append nocheckCPUIDLimit, before the ---
- Hit enter and the ESXi installation will continue.
- After ESXi has been installed, it will reboot, you'll then need to press shift-o to access advanced options, simply type in nocheckCPUIDLimit in order to get it to boot for the first time.
- ESXi should boot for the first time, connect to it with vSphere and goto Configuration->Advanced settings.
- Navigate to VMKernel->Boot and locate VMkernel.Boot.checkCPUIDLimit and untick the box.
- Profit.
