ESXi 4.0 U2 compatible SAS RAID adapter recommendation, please

[Warum18]

Hi,

I am looking for recommendation to SAS/SATA RAID card (low profile, external SAS connectors), proven to work with ESXi 4.0 (possibly U2).

I picked earlier the LSI MegaRAID, SAS 9280-8E, which is on the VMware HCL list, but it does not work properly, LSI claims it is not supported under ESXi.

Thank you for your advice.

[DSTAVERT]

I picked earlier the LSI MegaRAID, SAS 9280-8E, which is on the VMware HCL list, but it does not work properly, LSI claims it is not supported under ESXi.

The HCL does show the card is supported by ESXi but it does specify a particular firmware version. If you still have the device you might want to try making sure it has the correct firmware and upgrade or downgrade as necessary.

I would install ESXi to a USB stick rather than to hard drive. This is a supported install option. Just select the usb stick as the installation target.

[Warum18]

Thank you for your reply.

Yes, the card needs the megaraid_sas version 4.0.4.12vmw (which is as I understand, part of 4.0 U1).

VMware HCL does not specify firmware version, unless I misanderstand something:

Model	LSI MegaRAID SAS 9280-8e
Device Type	SAS/SATA-RAID
Manufacturer	N/A
Partner Name	LSI
Firmware Version	N/A

The card works, until I assign the available RAID drive to a VMware datastore. After that, ESXi hangs at boot.

I am looking for the SAS RAID card to expand storage, the ESXi 4.0 U2 host is already installed on RAID1 SAS array on an Adaptec controller (internal drives).

[DSTAVERT]

Check the firmware version of your card? Try an update to the firmware.

[Warum18]

The card firmware was flashed with the latest: 2.70.03-082 (May 05, 2010).

[DSTAVERT]

You didn't say what the issue was or what the rest of you hardware was. I would go back to LSI.

As far as VMware is concerned

NOTE: ESX 4.0, ESXi 4.0 Embedded and ESXi 4.0 Installable are equivalent products from an I/O device compatibility perspective. In this guide we only explicitly list ESX compatibility information. If a product is listed as supported for ESX, the product is also supported in corresponding versions of ESXi Embedded and ESXi Installable.

[Warum18]

Thanks again for your reply.

LSI L2 support says they do not officially support ESXi, only ESX.

The LSI card is in a Sunfire x4450. The LSI card works fine until the RAID storage added to a VMware storage in vShpere client - Add storage - and you reboot.

Until you reboot, the LSI RAID storage works fine, you can assign it to a vm, write data, etc.

But once you reboot the ESXi server, after the BIOS screen finished there is only a blinking cursor, ESXi will not start to boot.

If you power down the SAS enclosure, reset the server, ignore the BIOS warning, that the disks have disappeared and continue, ESXi boots back again normally.

Once EXSi booted up, you can even connect to the LSI card with the LSI RAID Manager, mark the drives confugured good, import the foreig RAID configuration.

In ESXi at this stage you can rescan the LSI card, it will see the newly imported RAID volumes. If you reboot at this stage (without adding the LSI RAID to the ESXi storage) you can shut down, reboot fine. The LSI RAID drives will show up in ESXi next time, again.

But if you assign them to a ESXi datastore, it never boots up...

Anyway, I can use this card somewhere else, but I need a RAID card, which is 100% certified for ESXi.

[Virtuali3ed]

I have Dell Perc 5i working with ESXi U2. Mine is internal but there is an external version of it as well and you can find these real cheap on ebay. Perc 5i's are on HCL for ESXi.

[Warum18]

Thank you for the recommendation, I will give it a try.

Interestingly enough, the same LSI 9280-8E RAID card with the same SAS expander works perfectly on a Sunfire X4440.

They are basically the same model, the X4450 is Intel, the X4440 is AMD.

On the AMD based X4440 the LSI card works even on ESXi 4.0 (build 208167).

Since then I tested it with ESXi 4.0 U1 and later with ESXi 4.0 U2 (build 261974) I can confirm, that the card works fine with all versions.

[DSTAVERT]

The Dell Perc 5 is an LSI OEM card. They don't necessarily work in all hardware platforms.