Buddy, you are in luck but I actually had the EXACT same problem on my HP Proliant DL380 G6 a few weeks ago and I also Googled around but no one actually had a solution, so I did the HARD work for you.
- I ran the HP Smart Update Firmware DVD
- Advice: create the USB key with Smart Update and then add Smart Start, plus do not listen to HP. Their "Insight Foundation" and most online documentation says the LAST version is 9.7 but it is actually 10.10. Yep, get the latest version by always checking the "Release Notes" tab on their download page:
- http://h20566.www2.hp.com/portal/site/hpsc/template.PAGE/public/psi/swdDetails/?spf_p.tpst=swdMain&spf_p.prp_swdMain=wsrp-navigationalState%3Didx%253D%257CswItem%253DMTX_94560dcc34e845edbb13a26792%257CswEnvOID%253D%257CitemLocale%253D%257CswLang%253D%257Cmode%253D5%257Caction%253DdriverDocument&javax.portlet.begCacheTok=com.vignette.cachetoken&javax.portlet.endCacheTok=com.vignette.cachetoken
- I ran the ESXCLI command and tried updating HP Smart Array controller driver in ESXi 5.1
- Why? Because some "experts" online state that it is possible that you are not using the HP ESXi image or your install might be missing drivers but guess what? This does not work, because the drivers provided by HP are for ESXi 5.0 and when you try this it basically tells you NOTHING CHANGED because it will not install 5.0 drivers onto 5.1.
- Also you cannot use vihostupdate.pl since ESXi5.1 does not support it, so you will have to use SSH and do ESXCLI...
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- Last but not least, people tell you to check the HCL list but this is an HP PROLIANT SERVER!!!!
- Come on, VMware partners with HP and they are not going to support a G6?
Anyway, so NONE of the above worked, but I read an interesting footnote here:
Basically, this "expert" does not give you any solution, but the bit about "thin provisioning" rang a bell in my head since I always thin provision my VMs and I traced back everything I did before I got this error.
- I had run firmware updates
- I installed a BBWC card with battery
- I lowered a RAID 10 with 8 disks to 6 disks
- I popped in 4 old SAS Disks from 2009 while removing the newer 2012 models so only 2 from the original 8
Logically you would suspect the firmware updates and maybe consider rolling them back, but my hunch was that it was the disks. How so? Well, it turns out that some of those old disks actually had some OLD RAID information on them. It is possible they were removed from an exisitng RAID and even though you use the ACU to remove any logical mapping and create a new mapping, it seems there is a VERY REMOTE chance where if you move a disk with some OLD RAID info that you will get this error.
It seems crazy but I proved it in my tests, so I basically created a RAID 10, rebooted, no ESXi, boot into ACU and removed RAID 10, reboot, go into ACU and create RAID 10, reboot, still no ESXi, reboot, boot into ACU and remove RAID 10, shutdown.
Now here is the trick. I moved the disks around, just try any random sorting, but if you are lucky - REBOOT.
I had removed the RAID 10 but guess what? Now I see a RAID 5. WTF?! 
Yep, it seems I had moved my disks around and I triggered a logical RAID 5 setup probably from some old setup, but that error I got made no sense and I wasted 2 days doing all these other updates only to find that it was a tricky disk? Who knows why that errant disk was impacting ESXi but now I wiped the RAID 5 in ACU and make a note that I am not putting any new disks, but rather sticking to the same 6 disks.
reboot, boot into ACU and create RAID 10, shutdown, Pop in ESXi Flash Drive, reboot.
Viola!!! ESXi 5.1 is humming along. Pretty stupid and your mileage might vary (i.e. you might have to move things around more than once) because I got lucky that in my first disk swap I found that damn RAID 5 setup but there might be a better way with you just making sure you wipe your disks before you put them in storage, hahahaha...
Remember, format/blank/reset your disks outside the ACU. So hope you enjoyed my story and good luck, but hopefully this will help someone else and now let the Google spiders index this baby... 