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aneeser
Contributor
Contributor

VMDirectPath / passthrough on HP DL380 G6 with P212 Controller and LTO3 SAS Tape

I try to run following combination:

HP DL380 G6 Server with Intel Xeon 55xx CPU

integrated SA P410i Controller with 512MB BBWC

Vmware vSphere ESX 4.0 standard installed

I put following addition to this HP Server:

SA P212 SAS Controller with zero Memory configuration

connected to HP LTO3 external Tape Drive

+ Iomega NAS StorCenter connected over Ethernet (iSCSI)

First I was activating the P212 Controller in the advanced settings for VMDirectPath and restarted the ESX

Second I was adding the P212 controller directly to a Ubuntu 9.04 VM and for a second test to a RHEL5 Server VM.

Ubuntu 9.04 is listing the LTO3 Tape with the newer cciss driver (ubuntu 8.04 did not because cciss version is to old for p212), but always it gives me timeouts in the installation, during startup and by I/O. RHEL5 was sometimes freezing and one time the wohle ESX host was crashed/freezing with a weird Kernel Message, that my memory modules may be corrupted! But they are really not, I tested them and the Server is running fine without VMDirectPath enabled.

Should I try to put a Memory Module with Battery into the P212 Controller or is it maybee better to buy another controller from HP.

Does somebody have the same problem like me or is trying to get a local attached tape drive working on a ESX 4 Host? I know Vmware that it's better to attach the LTO3 to another physically Server and that it's only experimental support, but we have also the NAS to recover everything and the Tape is only for a second offsite dual Backup Strategy, so I don't like to buy a second physically server to run the Tape only.

I'm very happy for every suggestion or help.

Thanks a lot!

Allen Neeser

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6 Replies
DSTAVERT
Immortal
Immortal

have a look at http://communities.vmware.com/message/1338919

Looks like memory solved the problem.

-- David -- VMware Communities Moderator
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ollixy
Contributor
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adding memory does not really help much, actually.

At least with my setup, the errors were not gone after adding memory to my P212, they only happened much less frequently, and only if I created heavy I/O on the bus (e.g. chkdsk in 4-5 VMs...). But then - I have an external SAS-RAID attached, no tape. And I don't use DirectPath as I don't need it.

For me the "solution" was to go back to 3.5iU4, that's rock stable with the P212, with or without memory. It seems quite clear there must be some driver issue, but I don't know if someone cares?

Sorry I didn't mention it in my original post...

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aneeser
Contributor
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Did you try this Firmware Upgrade?

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=15...

I had installed it at the beginning with the smartstart cd and copied the files on a usb-stick, but never testet with adding memory on the p212 controller (zero memory config).

I'm braining at the moment, if maybee your problem was not only the ESX4.0 driver, maybee the firmware was also generating this problem by heavy I/O load or in compination with the driver.

The Problem is, that my Server is productiv and i can't play with it for tests at the moment.... 😕

regards

allen

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ollixy
Contributor
Contributor

Well, I just did - to no avail. I still get the same scsi timeouts and bus resets, eventually killing all my VMs - I have to physically switch off the server. As I said before, this does not ever happen with 3.5iU4, so that's what I'll use for now (it's really only changing the USB-sticks).

But it's a pity, because I wanted to sell that setup to one or two customers and do some demos before...

I also have to test some Windows 7 setups, which is experimentally supported in V4. But as it is, Ill probably have to wait for someone from either HP or VMWare to fix the driver or whatever.

regards

Olaf

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sgerst
Contributor
Contributor

did somebody try the new firmware v.3.66 to fix this problem???

regards,

sebastian

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ollixy
Contributor
Contributor

I did as soon it was out - did not help. I'm using a LSI-Controller now, that works absolutely stable and that's it for me. I don't use the P212 anymore, though as said before it's been very reliable with ESX 3.X.

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