H330 configuration questions

[Dawg10]

Greetings;

I am trying to get vSphere 6.5 to recognize 4x4TB Seagate 12Gb/s SAS drives in a Dell R420. I have a H330 controller installed and the proper cable (SFF-8644 / SFF-8087) between the card and backplane.

Upon setup the RAID configuration goes smoothly, with the controller recognized and no issues setting up the 4 drives in RAID 5. ESXi comes up properly and vCenter registers the host and recognizes the H330 as vmhba2, but does not present the virtual disk for configuration as datastore.

VMware has very little documentation re: 4K native drives and offers up this document which says 4KN is not supported but 512e is, but there's no mention of how to configure the system as 512e. Going deeper suggests that only VSAN may be supported but I am unsure, as other sources suggest it is at least possible with a single disk.

Can I be pointed in the right direction please... Either I'm missing something simple or have yet to hit upon the magic combination. Perhaps RAID is not supported and I need to configure the H330 differently? There is no option for 512e that I can find.

Thank you.

Dell R420, 6-c E5-2420, 48GB, H330 (H710 removed), vSphere 6.5 with vcsa and 2 other hosts online.

 

[Dawg10]

BIOS v 2.4.2
H330 firmware v 25.5.0.0019; latest is 25.5.2.0001 and the delta is insignificant
Driver: lsi-mr3 6.910.20.00; latest recommended by Dell. Verified in use via # esxcli software vib list.

Following a rabbit that linked similar issues to idrac firmware, I removed idrac card from chassis as it wasn't being used.

End result is the same: ESXi boots fine and sees the controller but not the devices. I'm running out of rabbits.

edit: During boot the system comments: 1 virtual disk handled by controller and 0 virtual disks handled by BIOS. This leads me to believe the bios and the controller are not in sync, but which one is the culprit? Doing the change/reboot thing, which should waste the rest of the day... Any direction on how to narrow down the search would be much appreciated.

edit2: Going back to the beginning; although I can create a VD in either the PERC utility or within the BIOS configuration, the physical size is listed as 0.000 and the disks never initialize, regardless of RAID level or disks assigned. This leads me to believe the issue is between the disks and the controller, with emphasis on the disks. They are Seagate ST4000NM0014 rev K001.

Accessed the controller management page and selected Factory Defaults, saved and returned to the main page to find that initialization had started, was at 1% with the progress indicator active. Time to hurry up and wait.

edit3: Initialization 44% after ~ 24 hours.

 

[Dawg10]

No change. vSphere sees the adapter but not the disks. The adapter isn't telling the bios "hey pal, here's 11 TB of 12 Gb/s storage to put in inventory". Or the bios isn't listening.

R420 : BIOS : R420 : 2.4.2 = latest = Sep16
H330 Adapter : firmware= (latest - 1)
Driver: lsi-mr3 6.910.20.00 = latest

What to do what to do ...

Back to bios

 

[Dawg10]

The R420 server came off the line as a Kace K1100S; does that have any significance?

I can't run the tag 'cause MyDell.com/product list/add tag = haha, so I can't see if there's any secondary firmwares to update.

I bet there is.

There always is.

I need a service tag for a R420.

Anybody care to share...?

 

[MiniKnight]

Dell has firmware for PERC that some other vendors don't get access to when they use the oem box.

 

[Dawg10]

The card is not native to Dell Gen.12 servers; it's a Gen.13 device, but the PERC firmware doesn't seem to be the issue; both the ctrl+r and the F2 setup utilities recognize the drives and will allow configuration but does not present size.

Attempted to boot with NAS4Free v.11; the utility sees the virtual disk, reports its size and declares it optimum, but the routine hangs when it tries to mount the volume.

Searched ebay and found a valid R420 service tag. There are multiple updates re: Seagate SAS drives but none for this model, which is also not listed in the VMware HCL. I did find reference to the drives being compatible with SuperMicro running the LSI 9280-8e LSI 9380-8e.

The SAS HDs are being replaced with the 4TB SATA drives that were in it previously, along with re-installing the H710 controller.

The price of the SAS drives was such that I pressed buy-now without doing due diligence; I now have to add another SuperMicro server to the rack, just to run these drives... That's not a bad thing, but it is unexpected.

 

[Net-Runner]

Have you tried to pass-through the whole RAID controller to a let's say Windows based virtual machine on seeing whether your drives are recognized there? Maybe it's a pure ESX related issue?

 

[Dawg10]

I didn't think to try passthrough; thank you for the suggestion. I did try to install NAS4Free and it died with the same symptoms: the VD is recognized but can't be mounted.

I'm of the opinion that the drives are incompatible with the controller firmware. The drives represent early SAS3 and were likely not worth the time for Dell to issue a patch. It appears that SuperMicro made it work.

 

[Net-Runner]

I would still try avoiding possible *nix driver issues (ESXi, NAS4Free) just to double-check. The pass-through way is the easiest one without reinstalling all the bare-metal stuff.

 

[Dev_Mgr]

I ran into this with someone that bought a Dell server, but pieced it together online and didn't specify VMware for the OS (which caused Dell's website not to hide 512e and 4k drives from the list of drive choices). The OS could see the raid set made from 6TB drives just fine (512n), but the 1.2TB/10k drives were 4k, and that raid set was not formatable by the OS. He had to go back to Dell (sales) to return the incorrect drive and purchase the correct type drives.

If the drives are 4k, you'll never get them to work with current versions of VMware (6.5 and older). This includes if you set them up as a raid set.

If the drives are 512e, only 6.5 supports it and you have to format them VMFS 6 (only available in web client).

 

[Dawg10]

I would still try avoiding possible *nix driver issues (ESXi, NAS4Free) just to double-check. The pass-through way is the easiest one without reinstalling all the bare-metal stuff.

Good idea; I'll try this out before swapping drives. Thanks.

I ran into this with someone that bought a Dell server, but pieced it together online and didn't specify VMware for the OS (which caused Dell's website not to hide 512e and 4k drives from the list of drive choices). The OS could see the raid set made from 6TB drives just fine (512n), but the 1.2TB/10k drives were 4k, and that raid set was not formatable by the OS. He had to go back to Dell (sales) to return the incorrect drive and purchase the correct type drives.

If the drives are 4k, you'll never get them to work with current versions of VMware (6.5 and older). This includes if you set them up as a raid set.

If the drives are 512e, only 6.5 supports it and you have to format them VMFS 6 (only available in web client).

The manual is here; specifications are section 3.1. The drives are listed as 4kN only so, if I follow your comment correctly, they will not work with ESXi.

Thank you for the feedback.

 

[Dawg10]

I was able to pass through the H330 and have it show up in Device Manager on a Win7pro clone vm; it shows as two items:

• LSI Adapter, SAS 3000 series, 8-port with 1068
• PERC H330 Adapter

The LSI is functional but the PERC won't accept the Dell H330/Win7 driver, telling me what I have is as good as it gets.

No passed-through disks appear under win7/Disk Management.

Test is inconclusive.