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DDim
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Adaptec 5445 and esxi 6 - no control no raid rebuild

Hi!

I bouhgt adaptec 5445 raid sata controller for small esxi host.

This controller included in hardware compatibility list for esxi v.6

But I was surprised -  I can't check raid volume health from cli or from VMware vSphere Client

And more - if raid volume rebilding in progress it stop under ESXi control.

Rebuild can perform only when raid BIOS openned.

Please tell me can I start rebuild under ESXI and get status of RAID volume?

Thank you

D.

10 Replies
linotelera
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Hi and welcome,

Check this from adaptec site: Adaptec RAID Controllers and VMware support

Seems that controller tool is not available from vsphere 6.0... but try to check with Adaptec (or try to find an option in the bios) if there is a workaround, like this: After drive failure and replacement auto-rebuild does not start, why? where you could set this new disk as a hot-spare to force the rebuilding (i don't know if it possible in this scenario)

Regards

JarryG
Expert
Expert

This happened to me some time ago: got Adaptec raid-controller (do not remember exact type, but it was on HCL), installed ESXi and found there is no smis-privider. Adaptec-support informed me that particular controller is not supported anymore, and I should buy different one. I did, but not Adaptec anymore. Switched to LSI-based controller, and I'm satisfied with it.

I do not know why was that Adaptec-controller on HCL, but I blame both Adaptec and VMware for it. What is such a raid-controller good for, if there is no way of monitoring its health, managing raid-arrays, etc?

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DDim
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Thank you, I think that LSI best choice for me too.

Sorry for the money spent on adaptec 5445. This device must be removed from HCL.

I wany to buy LSI 9260-8i, what do you think about this controller?

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JarryG
Expert
Expert

Quite good controller, but do not forget to buy battery. It is sold separately.

Personally I'd recommend to buy 9266/9271-model, as this is using super-capacitor instead of battery (can hold longer, does not need "learning/formating", and charging time is very short compared to battery-based power backup)...

You could also look for re-branded models (IBM, Intel, Fujitsu, Dell, etc) which are sometimes much cheaper, than original LSI-equivalent.

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DDim
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Do not forget to buy battery. It is sold separately.

Thank you for you advice!

Battery required because poor performance of ESXI without write cache?

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JarryG
Expert
Expert

LSI-controllers allow overriding default settings (which is no caching for writing if there is no power-backup). But if you do this, you could loose quite much data (everything in controller's cache) in case power goes down unexpectedly. I would do this only for testing...

You could stay on safe side and use cache only for read-ops. But then writing performance will be very poor. Especially with higher-level arrays (5/6) it will drop down to trully tragical level. So I would definitely recommend to use battery/supercap...

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DDim
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

JarryG,

Thank you very much for you help!

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DDim
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Please, one more question about preferred RAID level.

What do you think about preferred configuration for 4 disks in raid (space not critical - only speed)

RAID 10 with 4 disks or

RAID 5 with 4 disks?

or another RAID config?

with controller LSI 9260 - 9266

Thank you!

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JarryG
Expert
Expert

raid10 is better than raid5 (concerning pure speed) because it does not have to do any parity-calculation. The fastest would be of course raid0, but that offers no redundancy...

lsi9266 is better than 9260. It has newer SoC lsi2208 (9260: lsi2108) and 1GB on-board cache (9260 only 512MB).

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Lennier
Contributor
Contributor

The is no need for Write Cache anymore, because SSD´s are fast enough.

Problem is AVAGO doesnt support SSD Raids so far (i have to check with latest Firmware - but Hardware didnt Arrive yet) my SAMSUNG 1TB SSD was not recognized by the Controller, not even as SSD Cache.

I cant think of a need for bigger Storage inside an Server, because for bigger Storage needs you can  use an iSCSI Storage like qnap or thecus (1GB´s is not that slow but you can increase speed with 10GB´s Interface and use SSD Cache).

There are no Relyable Hardware RAID Controllers for ESXi around, best option is a Relyable SSD and a Replication (ive. heard firsthanded from DELL PERC destroying Data without reason 6 times in Row and engineers worked several weeks for recovering data and find the error; an Adaptec Series 6 Controller destroyed Data during VEEAM Backup and the Backup was destroyed too; LSI/AVAGO/intel is 2009 technology with no SSD Support and an confusing management interface - i´ve only one Server with such a Controller and Slow Disk´s so im quite unexperienced, bu if a member Disk Failed (and one of those SEAGATE Enterprise things dye every year) im in big trouble to get the System back online) .

I would like to see Intel Software Raid support -.-

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