Unable to see Intel DC S4510 Drives in VMware ESXi 6.7U3

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takeawaydave

Member
Aug 20, 2013
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Hello
I am trying to get ESXi to be able to see 2 Intel D3-S4510 Drives - they are the OEM variety and I have them plugged into a PowerEdge R630.

The drives are the ones references in this link:

Downloads for Intel® SSD D3-S4510 Series (960GB, 2.5in SATA 6Gb/s, 3D2, TLC)

I have this afternoon installed on to ESXi the Intel SSD Data Center Tool however when I run it no drives are seen.

The version of ESXi was the ones download from the Dell website.

I also tried installing the Intel VMD release v1.4 for VMware* ESXi* 6.7 however this must be the wrong driver for the 4510.

Unsure of next steps - any help appreciated.
 

Rand__

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Mar 6, 2014
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How did you attach them to the system?
Are they new/unused or have been installed in a different system? (-> you might need to clean old partitions before you can add them as a datastore)
 

takeawaydave

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Aug 20, 2013
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How did you attach them to the system?
Are they new/unused or have been installed in a different system? (-> you might need to clean old partitions before you can add them as a datastore)
Attached to the system using the PERC mini controller.

they were meant to be new but they’re of eBay so not sure they actually are. There seem to be signs of wear.
 

Rand__

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Does the Perc Mini have a bios so you can enter a config tool to see whether it detects the drive? Via Bios maybe?
Can you attach them directly to the board (one for testing) to see if thats better?
 

Rand__

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Well thats good.
So then when booting into ESXI, do they show up under Storage - Devices?

upload_2019-12-29_13-15-39.png
 

Rand__

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Ok, but you do see the Perc Mini under storage adapters? Nothing changes when calling rescan?
 

Rand__

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Is the perc in HBA/Disk passthrough mode? If its in raid mode then you might need to configure the drives into an array or as single drives
 

takeawaydave

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Aug 20, 2013
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Thanks @Rand__

Configured a virtual disk using the 2 Physical Disks using the PERC config util and can see the virtual disk now in ESXi.

I'll have a play with this and see if I can get the native SSD exposed in ESXi by checking up on the HBA and Passthrough mode.

I'd like to understand how to get the best performance here.
 

takeawaydave

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Aug 20, 2013
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I ran a disk benchmark test on a Windows 2016 Server VM with the following results:

Screenshot 2019-12-29 at 19.59.04.png

Performance seems ok but would be interested if any one could share an opinion on this
 

Rand__

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Mar 6, 2014
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Well CDM produces nice numbers and is ok for comparing, but without knowing what you are actually going to do with them its not telling you much about whether its good for your intended workload or not... ;)

Given that these are SATA drives which are limited to around 500MB/s I'd say there was some heavy caching involved, either in the OS or at Adapter level...
 
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