Vmware Esxi Software Raid

In our previous post on how to update Avago SMIS provider in VMware ESXi, we discussed how to upgrade your Avago/LSI SMIS provider that allows you to interact with your Avago/LSI card with the Avago Storage Manager utility. However, may not have installed the Avago/LSI SMIS provider on your VMware ESXi host and you may need visibility into a RAID operation or to silence the alarm on your VMware ESXi host running an Avago/LSI RAID controller. What are your options here? Do you have to schedule a maintenance period to shutdown your VMs (if standalone host, lab environment, etc), install the vib, and reboot? Thankfully, there is another utility that can come in handy in these cases when you need to interact with your Avago/LSI RAID controller and you can’t schedule a maintenance period. For these situations, we can use Avago LSI StorCLI, so let’s look at Installing Avago LSI StorCLI VMware ESXi.

1. Esxi Raid 1
2. Vmware Esxi Software Raid Windows 7
3. Vmware Esxi Software Raid Free
4. Vmware Esxi Software Raid 5
5. Vmware Esxi Software Raid 10

• How to install LSI MegaRAID Storage Manager (MSM) on VMware ESXi 5.5 This morning I got an email from the datacenter that informed me of a loud alarm coming from one of my servers. I knew right away it was the LSI card sounding off due to a hard drive failure.
• Manage Dell RAID in VMware ESXi 6.5 with PERCCLI. Now that we have the PERCCLI utility installed on our VMware ESXi host, let’s take a look at the available commands and how we can manage Dell RAID in VMware ESXi 6.5 with PERCCLI. To see all the commands and parameters available, we can simply run the./perccli command.
• 1618, How do I install ESX Server on my IBM xSeries 346 system using the Software RAID manager? I configure the on-board controller to use Software RAID 0 or 1 and proceed through the initial steps in the ESX Server installer, but the installer cannot find any LUNs onto which to install ESX Server.

Esxi Raid 1

Also, every reboot cycle is really time consuming. So, since HP has always had management software for their raid controllers available for windows or linux, I went to check if there was some possibilities also for VMware ESXi. First, I checked on HP website and there was some promising download: Look, a VIB file! VMware ESXi: The Purpose-Built Bare Metal Hypervisor. Discover a robust, bare-metal hypervisor that installs directly onto your physical server. With direct access to and control of underlying resources, VMware ESXi effectively partitions hardware to consolidate applications and cut costs. The StorCLI is all command line driven, however, has most if not all of the functionality of the Storage Manager application. Installing Avago LSI StorCLI VMware ESXi can provide a great alternative to having a maintenance period and needing a reboot to interact with the Avago/LSI RAID controller.

Installing Avago LSI StorCLI VMware ESXi

Similar to installing the Avago/LSI SMIS provider, the process to install the StorCLI is straightforward and simply includes copying the .vib file to the ESXi host and then installing using the esxcli software vib install -v command pointed to the .vib. The nice difference in installing StorCLI from installing the SMIS provider is that the StorCLI does not require a reboot.

After installation, we need to change our working directory to /opt/lsi/storcli where we can then run the storcli command. Below we are running the storecli show command.

Silence Alarm Avago LSI StorCLI

If you are not able or have not installed the SMIS provider, you can using the StorCLI, silence an alarm that is sounding due to a failure of a drive, etc. To silence the alarm, we enter the controller number and the corresponding command for interacting with the alarm:

Avago LSI StorCLI check status of copyback or rebuild operation

To check a copyback operation, we simply enter the command:

For rebuilds:

Avago LSI StorCLI change rebuild rate

To set the rebuild rate of the controller, we can use the following command:

Thoughts

I like the tools that are provided by Avago/LSI to interact with the RAID controllers and affect change to the controller while booted into an operating system. The VMware SMIS provider is a great way to remotely monitor an Avago/LSI system remotely. If you don’t have the luxury of a maintenance period to reboot a host, the StorCLI is a nice alternative to using the Storage Manager application. The StorCLI is all command line driven, however, has most if not all of the functionality of the Storage Manager application. Installing Avago LSI StorCLI VMware ESXi can provide a great alternative to having a maintenance period and needing a reboot to interact with the Avago/LSI RAID controller.

Make sure the host meets the minimum hardware configurations supported by ESXi6.5.

Hardware and System Resources

To install or upgrade ESXi, your hardware and system resources must meet the following requirements:

• Supported server platform. For a list of supported platforms, see the VMware Compatibility Guide at http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility.
• ESXi6.5 requires a host machine with at least two CPU cores.
• ESXi6.5 supports 64-bit x86 processors released after September 2006. This includes a broad range of multi-core processors. For a complete list of supported processors, see the VMware compatibility guide at http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility.
• ESXi6.5 requires the NX/XD bit to be enabled for the CPU in the BIOS.
• ESXi6.5 requires a minimum of 4 GB of physical RAM. It is recommended to provide at least 8 GB of RAM to run virtual machines in typical production environments.
• To support 64-bit virtual machines, support for hardware virtualization (Intel VT-x or AMD RVI) must be enabled on x64 CPUs.
• One or more Gigabit or faster Ethernet controllers. For a list of supported network adapter models, see the VMware Compatibility Guide at http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility.
• SCSI disk or a local, non-network, RAID LUN with unpartitioned space for the virtual machines.
• For Serial ATA (SATA), a disk connected through supported SAS controllers or supported on-board SATA controllers. SATA disks are considered remote, not local. These disks are not used as a scratch partition by default because they are seen as remote.
  Note: You cannot connect a SATA CD-ROM device to a virtual machine on an ESXi6.5 host. To use the SATA CD-ROM device, you must use IDE emulation mode.

Vmware Esxi Software Raid Windows 7

Storage Systems

Vmware Esxi Software Raid Free

For a list of supported storage systems, see the VMware Compatibility Guide at http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility. For Software Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), see Installing and Booting ESXi with Software FCoE.

ESXi Booting Requirements

vSphere 6.5 supports booting ESXi hosts from the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI). With UEFI, you can boot systems from hard drives, CD-ROM drives, or USB media.

Starting with vSphere 6.5, VMware Auto Deploy supports network booting and provisioning of ESXi hosts with UEFI.

ESXi can boot from a disk larger than 2 TB if the system firmware and the firmware on any add-in card that you are using support it. See the vendor documentation.

Storage Requirements for ESXi6.5 Installation or Upgrade

Installing ESXi6.5 or upgrading to ESXi6.5 requires a boot device that is a minimum of 1 GB. When booting from a local disk, SAN or iSCSI LUN, a 5.2-GB disk is required to allow for the creation of the VMFS volume and a 4-GB scratch partition on the boot device. If a smaller disk or LUN is used, the installer attempts to allocate a scratch region on a separate local disk. If a local disk cannot be found the scratch partition, /scratch, is on the ESXi host ramdisk, linked to /tmp/scratch. You can reconfigure /scratch to use a separate disk or LUN. For best performance and memory optimization, do not leave /scratch on the ESXi host ramdisk.

To reconfigure /scratch, see the topic 'Set the Scratch Partition from the vSphere Web Client' in the vSphere Installation and Setup documentation.

Due to the I/O sensitivity of USB and SD devices, the installer does not create a scratch partition on these devices. When installing or upgrading on USB or SD devices, the installer attempts to allocate a scratch region on an available local disk or datastore. If no local disk or datastore is found, /scratch is placed on the ramdisk. After the installation or upgrade, you should reconfigure /scratch to use a persistent datastore. Although a 1GB USB or SD device suffices for a minimal installation, you should use a 4GB or larger device. The extra space is used for an expanded coredump partition on the USB/SD device. Use a high-quality USB flash drive of 16 GB or larger so that the extra flash cells can prolong the life of the boot media, but high-quality drives of 4 GB or larger are sufficient to hold the extended coredump partition. See Knowledge Base article http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2004784.

Vmware Esxi Software Raid 5

In Auto Deploy installations, the installer attempts to allocate a scratch region on an available local disk or datastore. If no local disk or datastore is found, /scratch is placed on ramdisk. You should reconfigure /scratch to use a persistent datastore following the installation.

Vmware Esxi Software Raid 10

For environments that boot from a SAN or use Auto Deploy, you need not allocate a separate LUN for each ESXi host. You can co-locate the scratch regions for many ESXi hosts onto a single LUN. The number of hosts assigned to any single LUN should be weighed against the LUN size and the I/O behavior of the virtual machines.