LSI 9341-4i raid card not recognized is ESX 5.5

[AvgJW]

Hi,

I was trying to setup a home ESX box and I'm having trouble getting the raid controller recognized..

HW Info:

-MB is  Gigabyte GA-H87-D3H ; the on board SATA controller has the raid function turned off and the SATA port mode set to 'IDE' as opposed to AHCI

   ->ESX is installed on a single SSD attached to the MB SATA controller; obviously it's seen fine.

-Raid controller is the LSI 9341-4i with 4 SATA SSDs hanging off of it.

The raid card itself seems to work as I can get into the raid BIOs and configure a new raid 5 volume.

Once ESX is booted 'lspci -v' does seem to show the raid card...

0000:01:00.0 RAID bus controller Mass storage controller: LSI MegaRAID SAS Fury Controller [vmhba1]
         Class 0104: 1000:005f

However in the Vsphere client I don't see the device or any volumes. I only see the OS disk and the CD-Rom which are both attached to the MB SATA controller.

Things I've tried:

-I installed the offline bundle from VMWare...

     megaraid_sas-6.600.60.00.1vmw-offline_bundle-1330596.zip

This installed without error, rebooted, but still can't see the raid controller.

-I also tried a slightly new driver from LSI with no change.

Q:

Anyone got any ideas about what I'm doing wrong here?

[corvettefisher]

The latest driver, the one for 5.5 is actually 6.603.55.00.1, you may want to attempt packaging this one

http://www.lsi.com/products/raid-controllers/pages/megaraid-sas-9341-4i.aspx

[AvgJW]

Thanks but I did try that one also.

[JeffOkada]

I'm having the same issue.  I have been all over LSI's website, VMWARE's website.  Installed all the VIB's I could find to the LSI 9341-4i.  I can't get this to Work.  My motherboard is a Asrock H87M Pro4.  I need some help.  I was supposed to deploy 3 systems this upcoming week and can't now.  I was on the phone with LSI and they dont know what the problem is either.  They are still researching.

If anyone has resolved this I would be greatly appreciated for any help!

thanks,

Jeff

[corvettefisher]

Version of ESXi?

[JeffOkada]

ESXI 5.5 Update 1.

[JeffOkada]

I spoke to LSI.  They are not 100% but the guy i spoke to seems to think, if the card doesnt have built on-board cache, then the card needs to use the motherboard to cache to.  That being said, if the motherboard does not support some Interrupt 15 for the PCI card slot (and another number i cant remember) then the motherboard doesnt do caching for the RAID card and the drivers can't be loaded properly.  He said typically server motherboards allows you to do this.

Unless I can get some help, I guess I'm returning 3 raid controllers and my projects and are gonna have to be delayed.  But Like I said, the LSI support said it should work.  I checked the ESXI console for the log if there were any errors and all the magaraid drivers loaded successfully except one which read:

...cpu3:33417)WARNING: vmklinux: pci_announce_device:1488: PCI: driver megaraid_sas failed for device 0000:04:00.0

[gnagus]

Hi,

I was facing exactly the same problem on a high-end Supermicro X9DR7/E-(J)LN4F mainboard with LSI 9341-8i controller and latest drivers/firmware.

Solution:

Disabled the OPROM for the PCI-slot the RAID-Controller resides in in the mainboard BIOS. Apparently the megaraid_sas driver tries to reuse the already

occopied OPROM.

Side Effect: the bootup Controller BIOS is no longer displayed and accessible. Connection via Megaraid Storage Manager remotely works as expected.

Regards,

Gernot

[KonstantinMiklo]

Hey guys, I too recently purchased an LSI 9341-8i RAID card however I can't get it working with ESXi 5.5. I've got an ASUS H97 PRO motherboard with latest BIOS along with the latest VIB / Offline Bundle drivers though it doesn't show up at all in vShere. The RAID card shows up during the POST pc boot and I can confgure the RAID in the RAID BIOS so the PC is definitely picking up the card.

The VMware supported hardware states this card should be compatibly with ESXi 5.5, anyone got this working?

[mdnormy]

I recently face similar problem and managed to get it to work.

My server supplier advice me to use ESXi Customizer to include the driver into VMWare ISO.

But, I didn't try that and instead do manual upgrade of the vib files. You can download the driver from MegaRAID SAS 9341-4i. That link should get you to http://www.lsi.com/downloads/Public/RAID%20Controllers/RAID%20Controllers%20Common%20Files/MR6.5%20V... which state that you need to login to download the driver.

I can't remember which one I used(you can try each). I also attach vib file that I use.

> esxcli software vib update -v <vibfile>

But once I upgrade the vib and reboot the server, VMWare able to detect the RAID storage.

[KonstantinMiklo]

mdnormy

, can you please state which motherboard you're using?

[mdnormy]

Came with standard Supermicro 1U which I believe is Intel C222 Express PCH chipset

[Evanthony]

Was able to get it to work with ASUS P868Z-V LX:

• Flashed the motherboard BIOS with the latest version
• Flashed the LSI MegaRAID 9341-8i BIOS with the latest version (mr3008fw.rom)
• Installed the latest driver for the LSI MegaRAID 9341-8i (Avago_bootbank_scsi-megaraid-sas_6.611.03.00-1OEM.550.0.0.1331820.vib)

[user9922]

My controller will not work if I set the controller ROM to use legacy mode (where you see e.g. Ctrl+R in the BIOS boot process).

I have to set the controller's ROM to use UEFI mode......configuration of this is done inside the motherboards "normal" UEFI BIOS.

And the controller config will now be accessible inside the motherboard bios.