Adaptec CIM and server health

[matthewk]

ESXi looks interesting, but I'm very concerned with monitoring my RAID array. Since there's no Service Console, I can't install Adaptec Storage Manager (ASM). Does the current revision of ESXi support monitoring Adaptec 5 series SAS cards? If not, what comparable card would have support?

Just to clarify, I'm not asking about driver support - the 5 series is on the HCL - I'm concerned with monitoring in case a drive needs replacement.

[admin]

At present, only LSI based RAID controllers (MR/IR) are instrumented to monitor the health of the RAID controller.

[matthewk]

How much information does ESXi provide about the controller? Can you go as far as creating RAID LUNs or initiating rebuilds or is it limited to simple monitoring?

Thanks.

[admin]

VMware developed a set of CIM providers for LSI controllers which support passive health monitoring only, starting in 3.5 GA. The current VI client health monitoring tab is based on these providers.

In ESX 3.5U2 we have added a new set of CIM providers developed by LSI themselves which support full management of the RAID controller at the API level, however those are considered experimental in the current release. The new LSI providers support MR based cards, and operate in the "lsi/lsimr12" and "lsi/interop" namespaces. I don't believe there are any RAID management GUIs available yet, but I'd check the LSI web site for the latest scoop on what they have to offer.

If you're comfortable writing python scripts, you can use libraries such as the pywbem library to access the new functionality.

Message was edited by: dhiltgen - corrected LSI namespaces

[jamie_macisaac]

Hi,

I'm not very familiar with LSI's product range. Is there somewhere I can find a list of MR/IR based RAID controllers, or is there a way to determine this from the product model number?

Cheers,

jmi

[sbholmes]

Hi

Do you have any idea when Adaptec RAID controllers will be supported? Am I right in thinking that without this support, I've got no way of knowing the health of my hard drives and RAID array so ESXi is not something I would want to be using in a production environment with an Adaptec RAID card?

Thanks

Sam.

[admin]

ESXi includes basic Adaptec RAID card support (ESX device driver) but is currently lacking management capabilities (requires corresponding CIM provider). We are expecting to include an Adaptec CIM provider in a future release, once it becomes available from Adaptec. Please check with Adaptec as to their specific plans and timing for VMware ESX CIM providers. Daniel

[DSTAVERT]

It would be nice to have some idea of what CIM providers are in the current release. Is there a list?

[jiths]

I think the present support is only for LSI(both IR & MR cards) and DELL PERC controllers. Most of the vitulization supported DELL and IBM server are coming with one of these controllers by default. The HP SmartArray controllers and Adadptec controllers are not having any CIM providers available now, but rest all functionalities works fine.

[jamie_macisaac]

Only the more recent PERCs will provide management support - the PERC 3/Di is listed in the I/O Compatibility List and works OK, but I can't get any management information out of it in ESXi.

Considering the age of the adapter (we got it in 2002) I can't say I'm surprised I don't get management information out of it. I needed to have Open Manage installed to get storage information from it when ESX was installed.

[Bolgard]

I really need that CIM provider from Adaptec! Hope they will release it soon. Anyone got a date?

[hhedeshian]

Ditto. It's a shame that I can't manage my 5805 with ESXi. I tried to manually install the storage manager by extracting the RPM and the post-install scripts but the default 180MB ESXi partition is just plain too small.

Why on earth would you support LSI before you support Adaptec?

[Bolgard]

If you got that far you could try installing the Adaptec command-line utility (ARCCONF) instead of the Storage Manager. It might be smaller?

If you try it, let us know

[Bolgard]

This is what the Adaptec support told me regarding CIM provider for Adaptec cards:

"Hi,

Adaptec will possibly introduce support for ESX-i around the middle of next year, but these plans have not yet been finalized.

Sorry we were not able to help.

Best Regards,

ADAPTEC Technical Support,"

[bek99]

Has anyone tried to install any of the command line management utilities? I gave it a quick shot, but it complained about additional libraries being needed and I really am not familiar with the vmware shell console enough to want to deviate to far. (am fluent in unix/linux however.)

Looking at afacli a bit, but it looks like it requires libstdc++ and prob. others..

Anyone daring? :smileygrin:

-b

Update- I dared. I had an embedded version of esx installed before for some reason. Installed afacli utils, ran the makedev for the controller and I'm able to manage the raid, it's just not done very pretty.

[jmack03]

bek99

You wouldn't happen to have kept any notes on this procedure? I would love to be able to monitor my 3805 from ESXi. Also did this procedure install the monitoring service, so that the RAID can be monitored & controlled remotely using the graphical interface?

Any info would be greatly appreciated,

Thanks,

Joe...

[IT_Architect]

>*: Update- I dared...I'm able to manage

the raid, it's just not done very pretty.<*

That's huge. I have a brand new machine that I'm getting ready to put into production. I'd love to use ESXi on it, but it has an Adaptec 3405 running RAID-1 and IPMI 2.0, but the RAID health doesn't show. Please contact me or tell us how you did it.

[hhedeshian]

Sorry for the long delay. I have not tried getting the command line tools to work, but I've made other progress. I managed to figure out how ESXi boots and how the partitions work. The biggest issue seems to be a lack of RAM. ESXi only allocates ~250MB on bootup. That 250M is used for it's ramdisk and management system plus web server plus.... you get the picture. The Adaptec software is ~65M unzipped, even more when running.

I apologize if external URLs are against the forum rules but I have some information on my blog:

Hopefully someone finds that info useful. I'll have access to more VMWare grade hardware early January. I'm going to get this damn thing working if it's the last thing I do.

<rant>"Some time mid next year" some funny joke Adaptec........ I'm really quickly losing my patience with this crap. It means Adaptec is not an option for production environments.</rant>

[hhedeshian]

I found this URL () which gives me an idea. I'll try rolling the adaptec management software into the oem tar file on an install CD. Maybe the installer will recognize the need for additional memory or disk space and do something about it. I hypothesize that it will end with the same result: kernel running out of memory on boot.

[Dave_Mishchenko]

I would guess you'll get the error as you expect. I think you may instead have to determine how to change the visorfs\main and tmp settings, but you can do it in the client (see attached image). I also tried manually editing esx.conf, but it seemed that the entries I added were ignored.