HP ML110 G7 Mirror disks showing as single disks?

[rogernome]

Hi Guys,

I have an issue that's freaked me out a bit. I created a mirrored array on a HP ML110 G7. The disks are normal SATA disks. I never thought much of it until I added an additional two disks for another datastore. When adding the datastore, it shows 3 disks...

I have 4 disks, 2 raid 1 mirrors.

What is going on?

[a_p_]

You are most likely using the embedded Smart Array B110i SATA RAID Controller. ESXi only supports hardware RAID controllers like the optional P410 controller for your server model.

André

[rogernome]

Right. So I take it there is no raid in place?

[Dave_Mishchenko]

If the server has the HP B110i storage controller, then this is a software RAID controller based on the Intel ICH10R chipset.  ESXi does not support software RAID with the drivers that come with ESXi so the best you'll get is individual disks.

[rogernome]

Ok,

So if I get a P212 controller, create an array, can I move the existing VMs to this array easily?

[Dave_Mishchenko]

The P212 is supported - http://partnerweb.vmware.com/comp_guide2/detail.php?deviceCategory=io&productid=4617&vcl=true.  It's fairly easy to move your VMs once you have setup a new datastore. If you're using vCenter you can right click on the VM and select Migrate.  For a stand alone host, you can remove the VM from Inventory, copy the files and register the VM again.

[rogernome]

Thanks for your help. I will be more careful in future.

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

... to add to what Dave said, I'd recommend you select the P212 model with the BBWC option to get a good disk performance.

André

[rogernome]

What about vmware it's self. I suppose it's not possible to move this after I've moved the vms. Can I blow it away, reinstall VMware to a newand attach the vms from the old datastore?

So create datastore2 on p212, move vms to datastore2, blow away vmware, create new array, load vmware on to the new datastore.

Hope that makes sense.

[a_p_]

This should basically work. You'll have to be very careful though with the new installation to not accidentally select the wrong RAID set as they seem to have identical sizes.

André

[rogernome]

That's cool. Just making sure again, as I've never actually done this and I have a running system on there, if I reinstall vmware, I can reattach a datastore/vms from the old vmware installtion?

Pays to be careful

[a_p_]

There should be no issue with re-attaching the datastore (it's actually just a partition with type "FB"). All you need to do is to right click the VM's .vmx files in the datastore browser to add the VM's to the inventory again.

André

[rogernome]

Thanks for your help

[golddiggie]

I would also at least consider installing ESXi 5 onto an USB flash drive (8GB in size) and then use all your spindle drives in the RAID array for VM's. I recommend the 8GB flash drive so that it will make a scratch partition and allow you to do things like run the included VMware Support commands/scripts as needed. You'll also have plenty of space for future upgrades. We have hosts running from 1GB and 2GB flash drives and cannot run the VMware Support scripts since they don't have enough space for the dump/compress aspect. We've ordered a bunch of quality 8GB flash drives that I'll be installing ESXi 5 onto and changing the hosts over to those. With those, in the future, we'll be able to use VUM to upgrade to newer releases.

[rogernome]

That's very interesting information. I hadn't even considered this. I will give this a go.

[rogernome]

Hi guys,

I now have the new ESXI up and running on the new array. I broke the old sata raid, it was only a mirror anyway. I've plugged the single disk in and now I can see the old datastore as well as the new data store.

However, when I copy the VMs, nothing seems to happen.

When I try to make the same directory now on the new partition, I get an error that it already exists... is it actually copying or is something weird going on?

[rogernome]

Nervermind, just had to rename the datastore.