ESXi on a Asus M3N78 Pro

[alekp]

Hey All,

So, ive decided to better use some hardware that i have. I have a server based on a Asus M3N78 Pro motherboard. Ive done a little research, and some of the ideas suggested, i have tried to impliment, to no joy.

I want to use the onboard RAID as a secondary datastore, the primary is sitting on a LSI RAID card and is chugging along nicely, its the onboard nVidia RAID that i cant get to work. I dont want to boot of this, simply use it. At present, it has a 3 month old RAID array of 6 HDD's in RAID 5. As its only a home server, i dont really want to go and spent $$$ on a RAID Card. And if i get a RAID card, ill get a good one, sol im up for some serious $$ So i was wondering if someone would be able to help me out.

I have tried to edit the /etc/vmware/simple.map file and add the following line

10de:0ad8 0000:0000 storage sata_nv

but after a reboot, it disappeared, i tried to readd it and rescan through VMClient to no joy.

I think i may be using the wrong thing or even approaching this the wrong way. Im fairly new to ESXi to be honest, and i understand this is unsupported hardware, but ive seen others make unsupported hardware work, so i would like to give it my best shot. If it wont go, so be it, but again, id like to give it a go. I didnt have to install extra software to make this RAID work in windows. I believe the motherboard is based on GeForce 8300 chipset. It had no problems detecting the LAN card, only the RAID.

Ive attached a screenshot from inside the same server running server 2008 STD R2, hopefully it will help.

Thanks in advance for any ideas, suggestions, anything

[DSTAVERT]

Even if the controller were recognized you will most likely only get individual drives.

To permanently change simple.map you need to make the change inside oem.tgz file or as you found out the changes are lost over a reboot. Follow the directions http://vm-help.com/esx40i/customize_oem_tgz.php

[alekp]

Hi there,

Would modifying the oem.tgz file be the best way to try and do this? Would the line i have used be correct to put in there? Is there any possible way to make it detect the RAID over the individual drives?

Thanks in advance

[cvargas]

You can remove the RAID configuration from NVIDIA and just present all the disk inside ESX and create the RAID Inside the ESX storage configuration. In that way you care not presenting a RAID you are just presenting disks.

[alekp]

So by presenting each disk individualy i can then create a software RAID in ESXi? Hmmm, that might be ok, i just personally prefer a hardware RAID.....

[cvargas]

I prefered hardware RAID too, but if your Motherboard is not in the HCL you can have issues so the only alternative is to remove the component that is giving your problems. Try to remove the RAID controller and see what you can do. Your other alternative is to use the VMWare server. You can install Ubuntu Server and install VMWare Server on top of it and in that way you can leverage the hardware if you want to use hardware RAID. That is the recommendation when you have to device to use ESXi vs VMware Server.

[alekp]

That is true, but i have ESXi up and running with 2 drives on a LSI card, i would just like to use the onboard RAID as storage

As for VMWare server, im currently using it on this server, problem is more that it is limited to 32 bit systems, so it wont use all of the resources this system has to offer. i read somewhere that vmware server 3 would support x64, but i cant find a BETA to try... hence ESXi, but this is a big hurdle. i would like to use this board and RAID if i possibly can, i know its not on the HCL, but i was hoping there may be a work around

[cvargas]

VMware server will use all the memory that the OS can see. I have use VMware server with Linux 64 bit for many years. Here is a document on how to implement it on Ubuntu.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/VMware/Server/AMD64

[alekp]

Ok, so VMWare server will be a second option.

I would still like to try the RAID. Can anyone confirm the line i should be adding to simple.map? (see above for my suggested line of adding)

Is there any other places i should try editing

Thanks in advance