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loufeliz
Contributor
Contributor

ESXi VSPhere 6.5 essential storage warning

I have a Dell R720xd

Host has 256 GB RAM and 16 1.2 TB drives setup as raid 10 array, currently not in production. Booting from mirror SD cards,  logs relocated to main attached storage.

VMWare ESXi 6.5   using dell image   6.5 U3 (VSPhere Essential license)

Had one drive fail, swapped it out and array is sill acring like its initializing with all drives are flashing (green) , been that way for few days

VCenter reports Critical Storage Alert seeing multiple warning   System Board 1  Drive 0 0  Warning   Reading : 17

repeats for Drive 0 0 to Drive 0 14

Should I be worried or is this normal?  Shutdown and raid controller does not indicate any problems with drives

Not sure whats up.  Hoping to use this machine for another 10 months before i have no choice but to replace it to move to newer version.

see screen shot below Machine hast 24 drive bays,  16 populated..

vmwarewarning.jpg

12 Replies
IRIX201110141
Champion
Champion

Have you try the "reset sensor" and "update" after fixing all problem within the PERC?  In the SEL are no new problems?

You can install OMSA and iDRACTools(not sure if its for 6.5 or only 6.7) to get insight into your Server trough ESXi. You use the lightwave OMSA trough a full blown OMSA on Windows/Linux by click on the bottom on "remote node".

Regards,
Joerg

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nachogonzalez
Commander
Commander

Hey, hope you are doing fine.

Is it possible that data is resyncing?
Have you used Dell's custom esxi image?

Warm regards

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loufeliz
Contributor
Contributor

Yep, used the Dell ISO.   cleared errors and they return after a while.  Booted in to lifecycle controller and ran diags. Initial test came back clean, running deeper tests now....

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loufeliz
Contributor
Contributor

Have run all the diagnostics on the embedded tools  quick and extended and no issues reported.   Going to move forward with the unit for now and will eventually move it to a non-production role.

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sloncek
Contributor
Contributor

I'm seeing the exact same issue on a PowerEdge R640 running ESXi 7.0

chaostic
Contributor
Contributor

Experienced similar with a R740xd and Esxi 6.7+.

The warnings seemed to relate to the background initialization of the raid array PERC card. Once the background initialization finished, I had to refresh the sensors (I believe that is "update" on the flash client) for it to re-read the status and clear out the warnings on the drives.

Gomie
Contributor
Contributor

I had this exact same issue.  it went away when the large raid array was done with its background initialization.

kindzma
Enthusiast
Enthusiast


@Gomie wrote:

I had this exact same issue.  it went away when the large raid array was done with its background initialization.


Any way to confirm this, and get the progress status / ETA of the initialization? Here is what vCenter says along with flagging the host with "Host storage status":

kindzma_1-1688051961146.png

kindzma_0-1688051839894.png

... and here is the only thing I can find in iDRAC indicating initialization along with rapidly blinking drive lights:

kindzma_3-1688052191206.png

Any other places I'd expect to see an indication of an operation in progress (virtual disk, controller management pages) - nothing.

Thanks!

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Gomie
Contributor
Contributor

IDRAC or server administrator is where we watched the array background initialization percentage. Then we would forecast based on how much time to move one percent. 

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kindzma
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Thanks - can't find it anywhere yet in iDRAC. (It's an r730 with all the latest patches, iDRAC8 Express, PERC H730P Mini (Embedded) with 8x 6TB drives (ST6000NM0095 7.2K 12Gb SAS) in RAID6.)

Tried all the options, all the tabs in iDRAC (Storage, Physical Disks, Virtual Disks, Controllers, Enclosures, job queue) - nothing.

The only thing I am seeing is that event I posted above, "Background initialization has started for Virtual Disk 0 on Integrated RAID Controller 1." from 3 days ago.

P.S. I did not do any manual init - just created a virtual disk. BGI (background initialization) started on its own.

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Gomie
Contributor
Contributor

when in the iDRAC, goto Storage->Virtual Disks and expand the virtual disk and it should show a progress field with % complete.  or in Server Administrator tool it will be under the virtual disk as well.

kindzma
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Thanks, this one was definitely not showing for me:

kindzma_0-1688398083268.jpeg

...either under "properties" or "manage":

kindzma_1-1688398353433.png

Under expanded properties / progress, it may have been showing something while in progress (it's completed since) - can't tell now - but pretty sure I I've looked.

kindzma_2-1688398491608.png

But then - it looks like you're using OMSA, not iDRAC directly. There are some substantial differences in UI and functionality. OMSA is not available to me (tmk) - the server is running ESXi 7.

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