HP DL380 G6 ESXi 5.5 Able To Detect Storage Devices But Unable to Create Datastores

[joogle]

I will state upfront I am newbie and am in need of major help.

I have a HP DL380 G6 for which I installed the custom iso for ESXi using a CD-Rom, everything installed great, no errors, status of health shows all green.

I have 3 hard drives in the bays, 500GB, 500GB, and 1 TB.

The sensors see the three connected but in ESXi under Storage I can only see one, so was only able to create one datastore.

My goal is to have a hard drive for each separate OS, I don't really care about RAID which I think maybe part of the problem.

I've attached pics if someone can help me here.

Thanks!

[cykVM · Accepted solution]

Hi,

first of all I would check if the latest Proliant SPP (service pack) is installed or at least systems BIOS, firmware for the P410i, the NICs and the HP iLo (if you have one) is up to date. The P410i's latest firmware version is 3.30 (B) as far as I can see, you have 3.00.

Afterwards go into the RAID configuration of the P410i and check if everything is set up correctly there. It looks like at least the 1TB disk and probably one of the 500GB disks are not configured in the controller's setup. That's why there is no volume showing up in VMWare.

If you change configuration in P410i referring disk volumes/RAID you may need to reinstall VMWare.

cykVM

[joogle]

Thank you sharing that information, the led me to do some searching on how to configure the Array Controller, I found the offline Array Controller HP utility that I am linking below in case anyone needs it

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB4QFjAA&url=htt...

I burned it to disc, booted, used the graphical interface and after some tinkering found out I needed to make each drive a Raid 0 Logical Drive.

I did that so all three would be independent, re-installed ESXi (had to reinstall as it kept rebooting), and the three drives were detected.

Now, I found out there is a offline HP Proliant Service Pack but I can't download as it appears I need a HP contract to be able to download the software, it apparently i believe did not require login/etc. before but now it does, am hoping I find it somewhere.

http://h17007.www1.hp.com/us/en/enterprise/servers/products/service_pack/spp/index.aspx

Thanks again!

[cykVM]

Yes, system BIOS updates and the SPPs need an active service contract/entitlement since last year. But the firmware updates for NICs, storage controllers and the ilo cards should be available as separate/single downloads without entitlement.

Maybe the SPP is found somewhere else but I would think twice to download it from a non-HP webpage.

[cykVM]

Looks like latest BIOS for the DL380 G6 is 2013.07.02 (B), so you may not need the SPP if the server already has this version installed.

[joogle]

I actually was able to find an older SPP on the HP website, version HP Service Pack for Proliant 2014.06.0_784915-001 (spp_2014.06.0-SPP2014060.2014_0618.4.iso)

My BIOS is pretty old it's a version from 2010, I didn't update it yet since everything works and didn't want to mess with stuff.  Based on the info you have, I guess it appears the later BIOS versions 2013 and onwards have the SPP built in it seems. Is that right?

Thanks!

[cykVM]

I have SPP 2014.09 (Sept 2014) and the contents list gives me the stuff included for the DL380 G6, that's where I got the version info from.

You should be fine with that 06/2014 SPP and the downloads available from HP support pages for your server.

[joogle]

Thanks for all your help, is there any other tips/etc. you can recommend using with ESXi 5.5 as you have the same server type as mine.

[cykVM]

I have a DL380e Gen8 so it's not very similar to yours.

On mine I had massive problems running VMWare 5.5 Update 2 as discussed here: HP Proliant DL380e Gen8, HP OEM VMWare ESXi 5.5 Update 2 keeps crashing (PSOD)

This is not yet solved and my best guess is that it can't be really solved.

I'm fine with running HP customized 5.5 Update 1, stable and no further problems with that. Even tested the Windows 10 Technical Preview on it which runs fine, too.