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The-Kevster
Contributor
Contributor

SATA Support Clear as Mud!?

From the updated I/O sheet this is what's mentioned on supported SATA controllers....

Supported SAS/SATA Dual Controllers

ESX Server 3.5 supports selected SATA devices connected to dual SAS/SATA controllers. This support is limited to ESX Server 3.5. It is not included with ESX Server 3.0.x.

The supported dual SAS/SATA controllers are:

  • mptscsi_2xx (PCIE) ‐ LSI1078*

  • mptscsi_pcie ‐ LSI1068E (LSISAS3442E)*

  • mptscsi_pcix ‐ LSI1068 (SAS 5)*

  • aacraid_esx30 ‐ IBM serveraid 8k SAS controller*

  • cciss ‐ Smart Array P400/256 controller*

So what is the best PCIE card for me to put into my S5000PAL server that will use the above driver, if only someone could make a list :smileygrin:

Thanks,

Kev

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Grimfish
Contributor
Contributor

Hi Future2000,

Glad it was of assistance, yes I have it all up and running and have had since my original post, It runs like a dream given the cost and that it is aimed at being a lab box. Just remeber not to use the PATA controller and the Network card onboard as they are not supported but if you follow my original post you should be ok. The local disk/s will be seen as SCSI storage (don't use the intel raid either) so you can run all your VM's locally if you want to get started straight away. Also as a side note I have put in two Gigabit Network controllers, 1 PCIe and 1 PCI (both intel) and they both work properly (the PCIe a little faster IMO).

As for iSCSI, I desperatly wanted to use the Thecus as I really like the unit but gave up waiting on a firmware that supported the correct iSCSI functions. A bit later in this forum I mentioned I purchased a low end ASUS P5BV/SAS server board and use the LSI onboard controller to run a raid 1E (LSI Special raid) and deliver iSCSI via MS Windows sevrer 2003 and a software package.

This works very well for running VM's, at the moment I have 6 VM's running: MS Small Business server 2003, MS Exchange 2007 on x64, 3 * Server 2003 std as terminal servers etc, and an XP machine. It still has plenty of head room available to run more VM's if needed, and I am looking at starting some server 2008 work with it soon. The only time it struggles is during big disk I/O operations such a VM clone but even then is doesn't take too long to finish.

I haven't tried HA and DRS as yet as I haven't had the need to buy a second machine to run in a cluster as yet, also we have ESX set up at work so I have had a play HA etc there. I am positive it would work without issue if you went the whole hog.

In the not too distant futire I will be writing about it a blogs.grimfish.com and putting up some more info and photo's so if you interested head on over in a little while and have a look (it's still under construction at the moment).

I hope that covers it all Smiley Happy

Cheers

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future2000
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

great news. I've literally just brought the box and built it a couple of evenings ago. I have the next 4 days of so I'm going to install Server 2008 and test the hypervisor virtualisation out before trying ESX. I've bid for an Intel Pro 1000 desktop adaptor on ebay so hopefully I'll get that soon. My main interest is to use this system for study purposes. I'm planning on taking my MCSE 2003 upgrade to 2008 TS exam in a few months and my old PC just hasn't had the power I need to run the virtual environments I need too. We use VMWare a lot at work and that's something I'm really looking at getting a lot better at using, perhaps thinking of the VCP qualification next year some time so being able to run ESX on this system is great!

As I can't quite justify the cost of another PC yet I'll probably just chuck in a couple more SATA drives for the time being and try to distribute the disk i/o from the VM's across a number of disks. Hopefully they will still perform ok.

Keep the posts coming, and I'll check out the blog!

Regards

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Grimfish
Contributor
Contributor

Hi Future2000,

Please let me know how you go with the MS Hypervisor, after I get my VCP I am looking to study that myself. As for performance with a couple of SATA disks, it'll be fine. That was how I had mine untill I did the iSCSI target and RAID disks and I only had 1 HDD. I only justified the cost of the extra server as I use it to hold all my important files as well for my day to day home stuff as it's nice to have the redundany in the disks, a little more peace of mind.

I am not sure what exam options are out your way but they have recently released a fast track VCP course in Australia that combines the "Install and Configure" as well as the "Deploy, Secure and Analyze" together over 5 days. I think this is a better option as it gives you the choice of exams to sit. From what I have seen (i have been studying the 3.0 course ware) the install and configue is relatively easy to learn. Just something to keep in mind.

Best of luck with the rig.

Chers

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marius1
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Can anybody please provide the model of an additional network interface that works on a DC 7800?

Regards

Marius

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maishsk
Expert
Expert

Intel Pro 1000 Cards works fine!!

Maish

Systems Administrator & Virtualization Architect

Maish Saidel-Keesing • @maishsk • http://technodrone.blogspot.com • VMTN Moderator • vExpert • Co-author of VMware vSphere Design
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kugutsu
Contributor
Contributor

Hi, Partmann

please help me

Although I validated SATA using gosata.sh, after rebooting ESX, the following error messages will be displayed. and shown "Activating swap FAIL" in booting process.

(ML115 G5 and ESX3.5update2)

-


VMNIX: (0)scsi; device set offline - command error recovery failed: host 3 channel 0 id 0 lun 0

-


but, swap-partition working correctly.

thank you.

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rpartmann
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

hi,

what says: cat /proc/swaps

i get ...

cat /proc/swaps

Filename Type Size Used Priority

/dev/sda5 partition 554200 0 -1

bye r.

ps: Award points if you find answers helpful. Thanks.
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kugutsu
Contributor
Contributor

Hi rpartman

# cat /proc/swaps

Filename Type Size Used Priority

/dev/sda3 partition 554232 0 -1

#

-


# mount

/dev/sda2 on / type ext3 (rw)

none on /proc type proc (rw)

none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)

usbdevfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbdevfs (rw)

/dev/sda1 on /boot type ext3 (rw)

none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)

/dev/sda5 on /var/log type ext3 (rw)

-


# cat /etc/fstab

UUID=a2106a3e-54e3-491e-ac79-d301b770af79 / ext3 defaults 1 1

UUID=f74004d5-53c3-4efc-ba30-7097df1fca98 /boot ext3 defaults 1 2

none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0

none /proc proc defaults 0 0

none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0

UUID=e8e41456-9965-497d-8c45-811101e62f4f /var/log ext3 defaults 1 2

UUID=f918c64a-266c-4f73-b107-1e082ad6cbb0 swap swap defaults 0 0

/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0

-


# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/sda1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux

/dev/sda2 14 650 5116702+ 83 Linux

/dev/sda3 651 719 554242+ 82 Linux swap

/dev/sda4 720 19457 150512985 5 Extended

/dev/sda5 720 973 2040223+ 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdc: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/sdc1 * 1 60801 488384001 83 Linux

Disk /dev/hdg: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/hdg1 * 1 60801 488384001 83 Linux

Disk /dev/hde: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/hde1 * 1 60801 488383968+ fb Unknown

Disk /dev/hda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/hda1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux

/dev/hda2 14 650 5116702+ 83 Linux

/dev/hda3 651 719 554242+ 82 Linux swap

/dev/hda4 720 19457 150512985 5 Extended

/dev/hda5 720 973 2040223+ 83 Linux

-


160GB SATA-HDD x 1 (/ /boot /var/log)

500GB SATA-HDD x 2 vmfs

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rpartmann
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

>Hi rpartman

>root@esx02 root# cat /proc/swaps

>Filename Type Size Used Priority

>/dev/sda3 partition 554232 0 -1

>root@esx02 root#

hi,

well i would say your system (COS) has as swap partition and it is

active but not used.

not too bad, ... does the error occur at each startup , or ist it gone now?

reinhard.

ps: Award points if you find answers helpful. Thanks.
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kugutsu
Contributor
Contributor

Hi

This problem is displayed each time. It was not displayed when only ESX was installed. It is displayed after executing gosata.sh.

The result was the same although I repeated this.

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rpartmann
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

hi,

well thing is that the disk drive will be detected without gosata as

IDE and with SCSI.

So it could be that any startup script references to hdXY instead of sdXY.

bye,

Reinhard.

ps: Award points if you find answers helpful. Thanks.
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kugutsu
Contributor
Contributor

hi

Many thanks! It works correctly.

I modified /etc/fstab.

UUID= -


> /dev/sdaX

thank you.

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a3h
Contributor
Contributor

How did you het esx 3.5 installed. I am getting a kernel panic after i hit the enter key for graphic installation

ASRock AM2NF3-VSTA motherboard

AMD Athlon 64 3800+

6GB GEIL RAM

1 x Samsung HD743LJ 750GB SATA hard drives

DVDRW IDE drive

GeForce 4MX AGP graphics card

Intel Pro1000MT NIC

Esx3i form usb stick is working fine ?:|

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kaabol
Contributor
Contributor

Hi Reinhard,

For HP DC7800 CMT:

Just solved an issue using onboard SATA-controller with ESXi 3.5.

By using the SATA ports 4 and 5 (Orange and light-blue) the disks are discovered as sdx-devices.

Hope someone will find this helpfull.

Regards,

Kenneth

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rpartmann
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Hi,

Nice One!

Reinhard

ps: Award points if you find answers helpful. Thanks.
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Grimfish
Contributor
Contributor

Hi All,

I Just thought I would share another system that works out of the box for ESX 3.5. As I have mentioned in earlier posts I purchased an ASUS P5BV-SAS Mother board, I was using this as a file server and iSCSI target under Windows 2003 but decided to try it as an ESX server.

The Install works from an IDE CD Drive and every HDD drive was seen in ESX and can be used to run VM's from. The only limitation I found was the Intel ICH7R RAID setup. This type of RAID is commonly referred to as fake RAID and this means it requires OS drivers to facilitate the RAID. As a result ESX just sees the disks as JBOD despite being set as a mirror in the RAID BIOS.

The good news for this board is the LSI1068 SAS controller is a dedicated hardware RAID device and ESX will see the disks attached to it as s RAIDed set as they are set up in the BIOS. ASUS also have a RAID mode called RAID 1E. This is in essence a RAID 10 set up but can have upto 8 disks in the set. It also performs very well.

All in all the MB was about $400.00 Aust and I feel well worth the money. It is a low end server board that doesn't require (but can use) FB DIMM's and can run the CORE2/QUAD range of CPU's as well as XEON's. It also has the Broadcom GB NIC's and these are also seen by ESX 3.5

I hope this helps if someone is looking for a board that does it all direct from the box.

Cheers

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noahhomsky
Contributor
Contributor

Please help! I had Asus P5N32-E SLI Plus with six SATA drives. When I install ESX 3.5 U3 - I have problem:

  • I'm restart in service console,

  • edit /etc/vmware/pciid/sata_nv.xml (037e->037f)

  • esxcfg-pciid

  • esxcfg-boot -r

  • esxcfg-boot -b

  • reboot

... but on load ESX write:

Activating swap partitions: ... long time ... scsi: device might be offline - command error recovery failed: host 6 channel 0 is 0 lun 0

... and hanging but hard-drives are working.

When I wrong?

Sorry for my bad english

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igurtin
Contributor
Contributor

HI

Reinhard

Did You successfully installed ESX3.0 on HP XW8200 ?

Thank You

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xx213421312
Contributor
Contributor

Hi,

I have recently bought a HP ML115 Opteron Quad core. I have been reading this thread and found a script which sorts out the SATA issue. I have updated the script to cover ESX 3.5 update 3, I have also updated so you can run the script directly from the ESX service console (via ssh).

Once you have ssh'd onto the box, chmod +x <script filename>

edit the script if you need to change any values i.e initrd file name (I have created variables for HD names, partition number and initrd image names). The variables should make it easier to update the script for new versions of ESX.

File is attached

Regards

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dchateau
Contributor
Contributor

I have a 306m xSeries server. but.. i'm not sure how to disable IDE from BIOS with out disabling the CDROM...

How did you disable the ide controllers?

Will this work with out trying the script?

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