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a_lemin
Contributor
Contributor

ESXi 3.5 U3 on HP DL160

Hello all,

I know there have been a few discussion about this combination before (ESXi on HP DL160), but i feel it is worth a new discussion since U3.

We have installed ESXi 3.5 U3 on a DL160 and it works GREAT. we did not have to do anything at all.

Simply enabled the virtualization support in the BIOS, and set the HDD mode to AHCI after enabling optimized defaults and installed ESXi with no problems at all.

NB: The HP specific build of ESXi does NOT work, you need the generic version of ESXi 3.5 U3.

Regarding peoples complaints about disk throughput, we installed a virtual machine and ran a disk throughput utility and managed to get a sustained read and write of just under 100MBps!!!

So, my question is this; why oh why do VMWare not want to add the driver for the HP embedded RAID controller?

I am very aware that this is a software based controller, but it is one of the best embedded software controllers on the market and performs really very, very well.

It is such a huge disappointment that we cannot enable RAID. If we could enable RAID we would look at purchasing Virtual Center and happily build a mini Virtual Data Center with a bunch of DL160's as they work so well, but adding the cost of an SA E200 to each one just makes the overall cost too much for a small business like ours.

Thanks in advance.

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7 Replies
Dave_Mishchenko
Immortal
Immortal

What model of RAID controller do you have in the server and what's the PCI id - http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/find_PCI_ID.php?

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a_lemin
Contributor
Contributor

Hi Dave,

Thanks for your reply.

0x3206

Chip Number:

unknown

Chip Description:

Adaptec Embedded Serial ATA HostRAID

Notes:

HP Embedded SATA RAID Controller (&

|

Sadly however this is not in the list.

I am just really surprised that it is not supported considering it is such a good software RAID controller.

Anyone have any idea why VMWare choose not to support this considering they are trying so hard to get people into using ESXi to aid progression into corporate sales.

Thanks.

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Dave_Mishchenko
Immortal
Immortal

I can't give a definitive answer, but one of the things ESX(i) does not do is cache disk writes. It's dependent on the disk controller to either complete the write or to cache it within a battery backed write cache. So for RAID adapters VMware has supported true RAID adapters because the performance of "fake" ones isn't that great. I've used soft-RAID myself and while the lower cost is nice but the CPU hit has been noticible when doing heavy writes and for ESXi that would have a negative impact on the VMs.

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purefluid
Contributor
Contributor

Hi, I have just purchased a dl160, with 4 750GB drives, LSI 1064 storage controller, 16GB RAM, 2 ZEON 2.66GHz processors. I have a problem that the install crashes with a core dump output whatever version of esxi i installed. I have tried U3 with the HP specific parts and without them with the same error, and if i use U1 of esxi i get exactly the same problem. I have tried installed with raid configured and without it and it has made a difference. Does anyone have any ideas what might be causing the issue, kinda run out of ideas so hoping someone can point me in the right direction.

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otherview
Contributor
Contributor

Sir, how did you manage to do that fake-raid on ESXi ?

Best regards,

Pedro Gomes

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Dave_Mishchenko
Immortal
Immortal

My reference to fake-RAID was on a Windows server. ESXi doesn't support soft-RAID.

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otherview
Contributor
Contributor

So, for a HP DL 160 G5 series with ESXi I can't make Raid 1 with a couple extra hard disks ?

Best regards,

Pedro Gomes

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