ESXi 4 and raid management

[Mariusdp]

Hi All,

I am messing around with ESXi 4 on a test server and i am trying to get raid management to work on the ESXi or on a guest OS. My raidcard is Adaptec 5405. I got it working with VCLi which sucks because there is no emails notification possible. No i wonder what do the big guys use to actually have a GUI interface possible or notification. Is HP or IBM able todo this in some way? Or am i taking a stab in the dark.. Any help would be awesome

[arturka]

Hi

Welcome on community

No chance to make it work :smileyplain: on ESXi servers. On ESXi servers I use vCenter HW monitoring and sending alerts (SNMP or emails) via vCenter build in alert mechanism or if there is a IMM\RSA (IBM) or iLO (HP) module SNMP alerts are sent from modules. You can install on your server, IBM or HP costumize version of ESXi - it contains more drivers and more CIM modules which will give you better HW monitoring via vCenter.

Cheers
Artur

Please, don't forget the awarding points for "helpful" and/or "correct" answers.

[Mariusdp]

So are you saying that if i use the Adaptec card and install vCenter HW monitoring i should be able to manage the raid? Or will this just monitor it? Would my best bet be to change to a proper server/raid combination? If so who would you recomend as having a "usefull" raid management utility though ESXi..

Thanks alot

[arturka]

Mariusdp wrote:

So are you saying that if i use the Adaptec card and install vCenter HW monitoring i should be able to manage the raid? Or will this just monitor it?

Just monitoring, you don't have to install vcetner HW monitoring it's a part of standard installation.

You have to understand one thing - there is no chance to install anything on ESXi. If you wanna manage your RAID via GUI or whatever you can give a try with ESX version (it has Linux based - RedHat - console and install VMware management package (if there is any) or try to install and work Linux package on ESX server - many people doing that and in general works without problems. But installing Linux package on ESX officially it is not supported.

Cheers
Artur

Please, don't forget the awarding points for "helpful" and/or "correct" answers.

[Mariusdp]

Yeah i figured i had to install ESX. But everything is changing to ESXi so seems pointless to stay with ESX if they wont keep supporting it in the long run. I did manage to get the adaptec to report to me via arcconf and wow was that alot to figure out at first. Even when i installed it the HW monitoring didnt actually show my raid card correctly. yet all drivers are supported i even pulled a drive out of the raid just to see if the monitoring will pick anything up to no avail..  Seems hyperV is somewhat better if i want to manage the raid with a GUI and get monitoring going.

Is there maybe another way i am not thinking off or is it pretty straight forward? How to all the people in say datacenters manage their ESXi hosts? Or purely by  "more" supported hardware and hardware monitoring?