vSAN 5.5 - Disk group question

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seang86s

Member
Feb 19, 2013
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Hi everyone. I'm doing some experimenting with vSAN / ESXi 5.5 U2 on a Dell C6100. I have three nodes with one SSD and two 4 TB hard drives each. When I look at my vSAN datastore, it shows three SSDs and four 4TB hard drives in the disk group. I know there is a limit of 7 disks in a disk group but is it true the SSDs count against this limit as well? I was hoping to get all of the hard disks in there.

As a future experiment, I wanted to use two C6100s, two nodes from each to form a four node cluster but I wanted to set this up redundant enough to survive an entire chassis failure (IOW, a two node failure). Does this sound doable?
 

markpower28

Active Member
Apr 9, 2013
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I assume you are using USB drive for ESXi OS. Normally vSAN requires HBA for HD/SSD. Are you using HBA or just build-in SATA connection?
 

seang86s

Member
Feb 19, 2013
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Yes, booting off USB for the OS and an M1015 in JBOD for the disks/SSD (I actually soldered in a USB connector and header on the interposer to accommodate this). I am using the Infiniband mezzanine card (ConnectX-2 VPI equivalent & Voltaire 4036 switch) for the vSAN network on each node. I used your posts as a guide to get that part working!

The 4th node will be backwards as it has a ConnectX2 VPI PCIe card and an XX2X2 SAS mezzanine card but I lack the cable for it right now so I can't add it just yet.
 

tjk

Active Member
Mar 3, 2013
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The SSD's should not count towards the # of spinning HDD's in the disk group.
 

markpower28

Active Member
Apr 9, 2013
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it shows three SSDs and four 4TB hard drives in the disk group
If it shows 3 SSD and 4 x HD then your HBA is on the support list. Since you are missing two HD, is that possible due to lose cable from the backplane. For testing, if you load Windows OS, do you see all the HDs?


vSAN / ESXi 5.5 U2
I would try vSphere 6 since the support for hardware is better and vSAN 5.5 key should work with vSAN 6.


I used your posts as a guide to get that part working!
Glad it's working for you :)
 

seang86s

Member
Feb 19, 2013
164
16
18
Doubt it's a loose cable since the drives show up in the controller's BIOS. All three nodes show 3 JBOD devices attached during POST.

Will the vSphere 5.5 keys also work on 6?