VMware Communities: Message List - Question on RAID Controller

Re: Question on RAID Controller

Arostov — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 13:44:04 GMT

Could you please provide us with information considering rediness of intel S5000 server board raid driver?

Re: Question on RAID Controller

bhavin78 — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 14:26:26 GMT

I used the below documentation to create bootabel USB for ESXi

http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/Boot%203i%20from%20USB%20flash%20drive.html

Re: Question on RAID Controller

Dave.Mishchenko — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 23:03:23 GMT

None of the SATA drivers with ESX(i) seem to support software RAID functions.

Re: Question on RAID Controller

ericsl — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 22:37:40 GMT

Dave,

Yup, ESX does recognize some SATA controllers. For instance it recognizes the Intel 5000 series controllers, but often NOT the RAID portion, so it kinda doesn't work because the drives are JBOD. Unless one is comfotable with that.

Eric

Re: Question on RAID Controller

Dave.Mishchenko — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 03:02:16 GMT

What process did you use to create the USB boot drive? Looks bootbank is corrupt.

Re: Question on RAID Controller

Dave.Mishchenko — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 03:00:39 GMT

Your post has been moved to the ESXi forum. ESXi (and ESX) 3.5 and higher will recognize and work with certain SATA controllers. You can get some info on that here - www.vm-help.com.

Re: Question on RAID Controller

ericsl — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 01:05:11 GMT

If ESX does not see the SATA drives during install it won't see them booting from any other drive either. You can get a Dell PCI-xxx Cerc RAID card that will work for cheap.

Eric

Re: Question on RAID Controller

bhavin78 — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 23:27:01 GMT

Thanks for the reply. My built in RAID Card is AMD SB700 which in not compatible with ESXi.

Can I try to boot from USB and use the SATA drives?

I tried to book from USb and this is the error I got,
Cannot get bank 1 paramaters.
Warning: Bank 1 partition type invalid. Ignoring.
Cannot get bank 2 paramaters.
Warning: Bank 2 partition type invalid. Ignoring.
Panic: No useable banks found.

Re: Question on RAID Controller

ericsl — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 20:38:02 GMT

You need to use a RAID card that is on the HCL. Google vmware hcl, it's the top item.

FYI, certain LSI and Dell cerc controllers will work and recognize SATA drives. There is no way to install a driver in ESX.

I just installed ESXi on an old Dell PowerEdge 1800 with a cerc controller and it recognized the RAID setup...

HTH,

ERic

Question on RAID Controller

bhavin78 — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 18:40:13 GMT

I tried to install ESX 3i but it did not recoginse my SATA HD, How can I use local RAID controller on mother board (GIGABYTE GA-MA78GM-S2H AMD 780G) to install ESX 3.0?