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ccoursey
Contributor
Contributor
‎02-06-2016 04:58 PM

RAID Hardware Question

Hi,

I currently have a single ESXi 5.5 host machine that supports only RAID 1 or 0 (Dell R410 with a SAS6i storage controller).  I want to upgrade (i.e. remove and replace physical hardware with a PERC6i) the RAID controller to support RAID 10.  A RAID 0 array is currently built with two hard drives, but they essentially empty - in other words, I am OK with losing the array and insignificant drive contents as a result of the controller hardware swap. Only one Guest OS (an Ubuntu instance) is utilizing this resource, and the physical RAID instance will obviously be provisioned/managed through the RAID BIOS (pre-boot).

1)  Is there anything (other than possibly a reboot of the physical host) that I need to do to have ESXi re-recognize the new controller to make it's resources (i.e. storage space) available to be provisioned to the Guest OS's?  Is there anything that I need to be aware of or watch out for?

2)  How is my Ubuntu (Guest OS) instance affected by the change (i.e. /dev/sdb1)?

I apologize in advance if I haven't made it all clear - VMware is very new to me (I am an optical networking architect by trade trying to learn more about the VM world).

Thanks so much in advance for the advice!

Clint

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2 Replies
ThompsG
Virtuoso
Virtuoso
‎02-07-2016 10:42 PM

Hi Clint and welcome to the community Smiley Happy

As long as the new RAID card is on the VMware HCL (VMware Compatibility Guide - System Search) and the drivers are available then a simple restart should be sufficient. I'm assuming ESXi is installed on another medium at this point, i.e. USB, SD card or internal HDD. I did a quick search on the HCL and the PERC 6i appears to be supported with ESXi 5.5

The guest should be completely unaware of the change, assuming the guest is not on the disks being destroyed Smiley Wink - that's the cool thing with virtualization, i.e. abstracting the hardware from the software.

Hope this helps.

Glen

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dangingerich
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
‎02-08-2016 09:21 AM

You may run into issues transferring the drive from the old controller to the new one.  The PERC controllers like to put RAID info at the beginning of the drive.  Even single drives require a RAID config.  It would probably wipe out your partitioning information.  Back up your config to a USB drive using a driving imaging program that works with ESXi, then restore it once you have swapped controllers. 

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