Multiple Arrays from P410 Controller for Presentation to ESXi?

[pwillmann]

All,

I have a HP DL180 G6 server with a P410 (512 BBWC) and 8x1TB SATA drives.

End Goal:

A) Create a single RAID 5 array w/hot spare or RAID50 array using all physical drives

B) Logically split the RAID 5 / RAID50 group into separate <2TB volumes for presentation to ESXi

The problem I am having is that I can't seem to find a way to make B) above work with the P410 controller. When I enter the bios level RAID configuration I have the options to create, view, and delete logical drives. Once I do A) above, that seems to be the end of the road and I have no way to carve the free space up further before installing ESXi. I've also tried using the offline array configuration utility (ACU) but don't see any additional options/perks over using the bios level configuration.

As you all know, ESXi won't recognize >2TB volumes so I need to split it up to <2TB volumes before I get to the ESXi stage. Once I can do this, I will create a 10-20GB volume for ESXi, and several <2TB volumes until remaining free space is used. I will then use extents to chain them together in VMware.

One of the alternatives is to create a (2) disk RAID 1 array, and TWO (3) disk RAID 5 arrays to use all of the disks. ESXi then sees all of the logical volumes without issue. I would really like to find a way to make B) above work so I don't have to waste additional parity disks.

Is this not possible with the P410 or is there something I am missing? Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Paul

[weinstein5]

I do not think this is possible with the P410 RAID card - you can do is create the three logical drives - Raid 1, and 2 Raid 5 -

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[pwillmann]

Is there any documentation that can confirm this? If others can confirm the same thing that would be great. I don't want to configure the box and find out after all configuration is complete that there is a workaround.

[a_p_]

Take a look at the Configuring Arrays on HP Smart Array Controllers Reference Guide This explains how to create arrays and logical drives.

You have to use the ACU, because ORCA can only create one logical drive per array.

BTW: I'd recommend you create the first logical drive with ~10GB and use this to install ESXi. This way you are able to reinstall ESXi (if needed) without affecting the VMFS datastores.

André

[pwillmann]

Thanks, I read through the guide.

I verified I have the latest offline ACU cd, and booted it again. I see no additional options to split up the arrays further logically and I looked through every clickable item on there. I can split mirrored arrays but that's not what we want.

My controller was firmware v1.66 so I updated with the firmware maintenance CD. All the direct firmware updaters were online versions only and I needed offline. No luck in the upgrade adding any options to the ACU which was expected.

Within the ACU I do however see that the Smart Array Advanced Pack (SAAP) license (which I don't have) enables:

RAID 6/60 volumes

HP Drive Erase

Advanced Controller Settings

Advanced Capacity Expansion

Mirror Splitting and Recombining

What I'm wondering is if this license enables me to do what I need. I plan to call HP sales but if anyone has additional thought on this I'd love to hear it.

If so, I'm pretty sure this is it:

http://www.provantage.com/hewlett-packard-hp-516471-b21~7DECC1EV.htm

[pwillmann]

HP sales didn't have the answer so I opened a technical support ticket on the chassis warranty. Long story short, the problem was that the array was configured initially from ORCA, not the ACU. The array needs to be configured from scratch in the ACU otherwise the options won't exist. To break up a single set of RAID disks into multiple logical partitions the Smart Array Advanced Pack license is NOT needed to do this and it IS supported by the P410 controller.

[thejack101]

Sorry pwillmann for making an OT but you have a Answer that a lot of people here in vmware communites are searching:

Is HP DL 180 G6 (like this) with a p410 raid card compatible with ESXi 4.1 and ESXi in general?

VMware and HP gives certification only for ESX and not ESXi. From what you write here it seems that ESXi works without any problem, is it correct?

Which model exactly do you own? (there are 6 different hp dl180 g6 )

Thx a lot

[Josh26 · Accepted solution]

Hi,

I can tell you we are running exactly this card with multiple LUNs.

We did so using the latest firmware, and booted the latest Smartstart CD to access the ACU.

Create an array, select all disks, when asked for a size, just "shrink" it. Then hit "create logical array" to build your second. Advanced Smartarray license not required.

[pwillmann]

thejack101 - you should have no problems running ESXi 4.1 on that box. I am running the same configuration but with a 512Mb BBWC and a slower E5400 series processor

[darkbgr123]

That's exactly what i've done too with the P410i array, here is a screenshot. on this specific host I had 6x 1TB SAS drives.

By the way for your cache settings I recommend 75% write 25% read as long as you have the battery backed write cache (512mb/1gb)

I tend to use 600-700GB LUNs in general and run 6-7 VM's out of each LUN