Esxi 5 Super Micro Servers

[kspare]

We're currently stuck running esx4.1 with a 3Ware 9750 Raid Card. Normally I would be running HP servers but it's a long story.

I'm looking for soem advice on an array controller that support 4 internal ports for 3gb/6gb sata drives.

I'm looking for vsphere support so we can monitor the status of the drives and the array directly from there.

The suggestion from LSI at this point is so have a small linux machine on each host running the 3dm software utilizing direct path to access the controller.

I'm nto sure this is the best thing, but a machine consuming 256mb of ram wouldn't be the end of the world.

What are others using? I can't be the only one in this situation.

[brucekconvergen]

I replaced the 9750s in a couple of hosts here with LSI 9260-8i cards, worked great.  The 9260-4i has only 4 ports, and will save you some money.  They "should" be able to read your existing array, but I can't swear that it will.  YOu will need to install the LSI Provider file from LSI to get teh hardware stats monitoring, but the ESXi 5.x ISOs from VMWare will detect and install a correct driver for the 9260-xi units out of the box.  We happen to use Supermicro as well here.

[kspare]

Could you show a screen shot of vsphere monitoring the drives?

How do you go about doing battery tests now?

I'm not worried about the data on the disks, we'll migrate off so we can wipe and run vmfs5 anyway.

We're also planning to boot from USB rather than disk. So I think this make things easier?

Because I want to boot esxi5 from usb and not disk. I wonder if the new drivers would work with vsphere?

[brucekconvergen · Accepted solution]

The battery tests are automatically handled by the controller BIOS.  Vcenter can be configured to warn on RAID array status or Battery status issues.

[kspare]

on the 9750 you have to use the 3ware app to perform the battery tests.

It looks like I will need to buy 3 new controllers I guess!

[brucekconvergen]

Life is a lot easier with officially supported hardware -- for sure.  Make sure you order new Cache batts for those as well, and put the latest firmware on those cards.

[kspare]

I finally got my server upgraded to esxi5, fully patched. and I have the 3ware 9750 driver installed. I can see my previous vmware volumes.

My problem is that I still can't see the status of the storage!

Any tips on what I am missing here?

[brucekconvergen]

And you won't be able to... to see the status on newer cards, you have to load the LSIProvider.vib (from LSI) but it does not work with that old card.

[kspare]

I'm going to get them swapped out for 9260's. I was thinking about that 9266 but i'm worried that it won't be supported properly like the 9260.

[kspare]

Bruce, have you had any experience with the 9266 controller and esxi yet?

[brucekconvergen]

No... as far as local storage with newer LSI adapters, only have used the 9260-8i.  The 9266 controller is not currently listed in the HCL for ESXi 5.0 or 5.0 U1, so unless someone from VMware pipes up, or if someone at LSI can assure you, the 9266 would be a gamble as far as compatibility (though I'd lean towards it working, probably, but I like to play it safe and buy stuff on the HCL).

[kspare]

Bruce, I finally got a 9260 in one of my servers today. What did you use for your array settings to optimize the card? Does io caching help at all?