Need help: On HP MS Gen8, ESXi 6.5 has been installed on a SSD(Raid 0), but NO solution for other 3 hard discs(raid 0 respectively)

[seanseanyang]

I have HP MS Gen8 ,with the following configuration:

1. Use HP B120i Raid controller;

2. 1 SSD and 3 hard discs have been added into the Raid controller with raid 0 respectively

And now , I did the following things to start ESXi 6.5 journey :

1. Install the latest HP MS Gen8 customized ISO image for ESXi successfully onto the SSD(512G)

2. With vSphere client, the SSD was recognized as datastore 1 , and all the other 3 hard discs can be browsed in device list;

3. Created a VM successfully with guest OS windows server 2012 R2

But, I met the problem when I want to attach(by any way) the hard disc into ESXi host as data store---No solution can work! What I have tried were:

1. Passthrough the B120i raid controller to VM windows server 2012 , but after passthrough enabled after host reboot , nothing can be seen even the SSD....

2. RDM the hard disc to SSD directory , with the following command:

        vmkfstools -z /dev/disks/naa.600508b1001c61f25dbb4f4397c71543 /vmfs/volumes/5847c845-a10edd1a-b9d6-645106d8

8eec/TOSHIBASSD512GQ300PRO.vmdk

       And I got error:

        Failed to create virtual disk: The specified device is not a valid physical disk device (20).

So, now I'm stucked .....how can i use the other 3 hard discs(Raid 0 under B120i) under ESXi --- these 3 hard discs are large enough(2*3T and 1*4T) ,so I really don't want to lost the data and backup is also difficult.

Please help!

[RAJ_RAJ]

Hi ,

was working on previous version ?

Please check the compatibility of server and raid controller , vsphere 6.5 won't support most of the hardware .

http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php

I think this controller won't support esxi 6.5

[seanseanyang]

Thanks for your reply.

I tried ESXi 5.5 and the same issue ,so I may not think it's just a compatibility issue.

One opinion is, I should have 2 raid controller since B120i is the only one soft raid controller and then it can't be passthrough in ESXi...

[a_p_]

I basically see two possible issues with this.

• The B120 is a software RAID controller, for which ESXi doesn't provide RAID drivers, so you cannot use RAID sets.
• The second issue might be related to your disks, see https://kb.vmware.com/kb/2091600

In order to use the disks you may need to get a P4xx RAID controller. In this case make sure you get one with battery/flash backed cache!

André