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alrowis
Contributor
Contributor

Installing HBS cards in VMware

Hi every one

I am have two internal disks in my VMware server and I need more space. I am planning to use SAN storage. In order to do that, I need to install two HBA cards. I was wondering about the following things:

1) How to install HBA cards software in the VMware ESX server.

2) Do i need to rebuild the VMware server in order to mount the new SAN storage?

3) Do i need to reboot the whole server?

Thanks

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Selekta
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hi,

You will need to shut down the ESX server and install the HBA cards, ensure they are on the compatibility list and are supported. You can power on your ESX server after the HBA's have been installed physically. If they are on the compatibility guide then they will be detected and configured by the ESX server automatically.

You can then zone in and LUN mask your SAN storage to your ESX server as you would any other server.

Then in VI client you will simply need to go to Configuration-Storage then click Rescan in the top right hand corner. The new storage should be detected and you can then create your VMFS stores.

Hope this helps.

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alrowis
Contributor
Contributor

Hi Selekta

Thanks for replying to my email. It really helped me a lot. I have another

question. What if i add another SCSI hardisk to the VMware server. Do I

need to rebuild the VMware server?

Thanks

Thamir

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Selekta
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

No not at all, the only time you will need to rebuild an ESX server is if something really drastic happens to it. After you have added the extra storage it should be automatically detected as additional storage once the ESX server comes up. You can then create a VMFS partition on it if you so wish. It is usually handy to store ISO images on.

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