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catjumper68
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esx4 install to raid1 with raid-card, but I look 2drives on console. Why?

Hello everyone. Nice to meet to you.

I have a strange things about hard-raid drives. Could you please advise to me?

I set a sas-sata raid card with LSI 1068E controler, to Xeon Nehalem machine.

Put it 2 SATA Hard drives.

I create a RAID 1 mirroring , and installed ESX4.1.0,   installed some guest VM  successfuly.

Then logon to ESX by vSpher Client. Configuration tab says 1 drives, I think its raid1 drive.

Storage adapter is vmhba0 only,  path is vmhba0:C1:T0:L0.

So I blieve that my esx is running on raid1 drive correctry.

BUT..  on esx console, (put ALT+F1 screen),  I can see 2 drives by fdisk -l /dev/sda and fdisk -l /dev/sdb command.

The partition is not same sda and sdb.

I create raid1, so the drive sda1 and sdb1 is same partion, I think. but why not?, why I can see 2 drives.

Is this true? or something misstake?

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FranckRookie
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Hi Catjumper68,

Welcome to the forums.

It should be because your LSI controller is not able to manage RAID directly with its firmware but should rely on a software or driver. As ESX does not contain this piece of software, it should not be able to manage the RAID configuration so it sees two separated disks.

Have a look at your device documentation to see how to use it and if the RAID feature is compatible with vSphere. Check if it needs a special software or driver for other operating systems to support RAID configs.

Good luck.

Regards

Franck

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catjumper68
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Thank you FranckRookie.

For certainly, VMware compatibility guide said LSI1068E needs a device driver.

So now, my machine is not raid1 mirroring, isn't it.

It's terrible !

Later,  I will check that one drive is reject,  a new drive put on, and rebuild start, repaire done or not.

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patrickds
Expert
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can you post the result of you fdisk -l ?

It's normal to see 2 disks: 1 is the physical disk, the other is the esxconsole.vmdk, the virtual disk containing the console VM.

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catjumper68
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I use 2 drives. Each drive is 500GB capacity.

certainly  I wondered why /dev/sdb is only 8GB capacity.

fdisk -l  said as follows

Disk /dev/sda: 499.9 GB, 499999834112 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60788 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1         140     1124518+  83  Linux
/dev/sda2             141         154      112455   fc  VMware VMKCORE
/dev/sda3             155       60788   487042605    5  Extended
/dev/sda5             155       60788   487042573+  fb  VMware VMFS

Disk /dev/sdb: 8730 MB, 8730443776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1061 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1               1         169     1357461   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb2             170         423     2040255   83  Linux
/dev/sdb3             424        1061     5124735    5  Extended
/dev/sdb5             424        1061     5124703+  83  Linux

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nick_couchman
Immortal
Immortal

Two possibilities:

1) If the drives are not actually mirroring correctly, then it's likely you have a "fake RAID" controller that does not actually have an on-board RAID processor, but relies on the main processor to do the RAID work.  As someone already mentioned, these cards rely on drivers loaded into the base operating system to accomplish the RAID tasks, and aren't usually supported by ESX.

2) Some newer versions of RAID controllers actually do tell the O/S what drives are part of the RAID array.  I notice this on the Dell PowerEdge 11th Generation series (R610, for example), when I do "lsscsi" in Linux, I see the RAID array plus the drives that are part of the array.  I can't actually access the drives individually, and the RAID controller takes care of all the mirroring, but it gives you visibility into what drives are actually part of that RAID set.

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patrickds
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That's what it always looks like in ESX 4; /dev/sdb is your console vmdk, which is located on the VMFS partition of /dev/sda

If you look at your host configuration, storage adapters section, you'll see how your controller and disk are recognised.

catjumper68
Contributor
Contributor

I look at my host configuration, storage adapters section,

appeared are

onboard device is vmhba1, it has no path

LSI1068E is vmhba0, path is vmhba0:C1:T0:L0, LUN 0, device name is LSILOGIC Serial Attached SCSI Disk (naa.600508e.......)

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patrickds
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LSILOGIC Serial Attached SCSI Disk (naa.600508e.......)

looks to me like your mirroring is working fine.

Disk is detected as an LSILOGIC logical disk, just like you'd see on an HP or other RAID controller.

Otherwise you would see the disk as whatever the actual physical disk is: hitachi, maxtor, ...

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catjumper68
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Thank you very much everyone.

I'll try the rebuilding process later.   then  I will post the result.

thankyou.

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catjumper68
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Sorry to very late.

The rebuilding process was completed.

On the esx console, (put ALT+F1 screen),  I can see 2 drives. This is correctory.

I installed the esx to single hard drive machine, and I also see 2 drives.

Thank you.

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