Serious problem esxi

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alex1002

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Apr 9, 2013
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Good day
I got an server super micro fattwin with only one pciexpess port currently used for my 10gbe card. I wanted to use the onboard Intel raid controller. But the esxi bypasses the raid and see every drive as an single drive. This is due to software raid use. Can anyone help me or tell me if there's a work around to trick esxi to see the raid? Or what other options I've got?

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vl1969

vl1969

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Feb 5, 2014
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alex1002 said:
Good day
I got an server super micro fattwin with only one pciexpess port currently used for my 10gbe card. I wanted to use the onboard Intel raid controller. But the esxi bypasses the raid and see every drive as an single drive. This is due to software raid use. Can anyone help me or tell me if there's a work around to trick esxi to see the raid? Or what other options I've got?

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Click to expand...

I don't think ESXi can bypass the hardware raid if it is properly setup.
are you sure the on-board controller is a proper raid controller?
and it is configured to do raid and not simply HBA?

ESXi is a software, it kicks in after the BIOS and other hardware related process are done.
so if you setup raid in BIOS or the controller it self, or both than ESXi simply must use the drive you are presenting it with.

check your controller
 
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Peanuthead

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What's the exact model number of the server? If I remember correctly most of their systems use an Intel/lsi software raid. If that is the case in your situation the only option you have is to use some form of shared storage or use a local HBA or raid card.
 
Tom5051

Tom5051

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Sounds like the on board disk controller is only SATA software RAID. You can either get a hardware raid card and use the on board network or use iSCSI over the 10GBe network card to a dedicated storage server. There are no tricks that I have heard of to get ESXi to see a software raid array as a single drive.
 
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alex1002

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The same server with hyperv Can see the raid. No issues. Esxi see separate drives. I may need to find a priority raid card designed for supermicro priority pcie Express slot. But I cannot find these anywhere.

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Tom5051

Tom5051

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Swap your 10GBe card for the Supermicro MLP 10GBE board and get a dedicated RAID card or run Hyper-V

Hyper-V supports software raid where as ESXi does not and never has.
No enterprise would use software raid hence VMware don't bother to write the code to make it work.
 
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Aestr

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Oct 22, 2014
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I think the BPN-ADP-S2208L-H8IR is what's in my FatTwin nodes. I've found a few places online that have them in stock, however at ~$330 and with no used market it's a tough sell. This is why I'm so happy my FatTwin came with both the proprietary RAID card and 10gbe NICs as getting them after the fact would cost more than the whole barebones did.
 
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alex1002

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I know shot my self in the leg setting this server. I only had 4u in the rack it needed to go into. And they required high performance multiservers. Now I wonder if I could leaves the drives in non raid mode and perhaps setup vsan

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Aestr

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It should work. I've done it in the past with X9 motherboards. VSAN will throw alerts about the controller not being on the HCL though.
 
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alex1002

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Aestr said:
It should work. I've done it in the past with X9 motherboards. VSAN will throw alerts about the controller not being on the HCL though.
Click to expand...
Will it still work tho? Other then warning. I don't see what's wrong with Intel non raid vs hba non raid.

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Aestr

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It worked just fine for me for several months. It's not qualified, so you of course have to take on the risk that brings, but it should work.
 
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alex1002

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Aestr said:
It worked just fine for me for several months. It's not qualified, so you of course have to take on the risk that brings, but it should work.
Click to expand...
I'll try not tomorrow. All my fault tho. Supermicro does have a SKU of the fattwin with LSi sas3 controller on board. You learn lesson as you go.

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vl1969

vl1969

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if this is a home setup and not overly important staf, why not just bite the bullet and try Proxmox on it.
Hyper-V can be expensive unless you already have the licenses, even if you run Free Core setup
you need licenses for client.
you already have the bas hardware, try putting Proxmox on it.
it is a base Linux Debian so it should work with software raid.
if not you can build out a software raid on it if you want. (you do not need to run ZFS in Proxmox, it supported and you can even do a bootable ZFS raid right from installer if you want, but you do not need to run use it.)
as it is a basic Linux you can do lots of things on the host that ESXi will not let you do anyway.
it is also KVM based, again , many things are built in and very well supported by the system.
And you may not have to buy new and expensive hardware in addition to what you already have.
furthermore, Proxmox VE 4.3+ have great support for HA clusters.
 
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