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BaSergey
Contributor
Contributor

megaraid_sas 5.34 hangs at boot - what to do?

Hello everybody!

This is what i have: Xeon E3110 @ Intel S3210SHLX, 8Gb DDR2 ECC, SRCSATAWB + BBU (WriteBack cashing), RAID5 4*250Gb.

All work fine since ESXi 4 was installed three years ago.

I've upgraded my host as patches was released and the last working build was ESXi 5 b.515841.

After upgrade to ESXi 5 update 1 host hangs during reboot at megaraid_sas initialization.

Same thing when booting from ESXi 5 update 1 ISO (VMware-VMvisor-Installer-5.0.0.update01-623860.x86_64.iso).

Also, once before I can't upgrade megaraid_sas driver when I found new version (5.35) at Intel support site - same hang.

Does anybody knows what to do now?

I know that my MB not listed in ESXi 5 HCL, but it works fine quite a long time.

So, I'm ready to spent my weekend for playing with MB and RAID settings but maybe someone can give me a hint?

Thanks.

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8 Replies
Sreejesh_D
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

what is the LSI controller the server has?

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BaSergey
Contributor
Contributor

Intel SRCSATAWB is rebranded LSI 1078.

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michaelm91
Contributor
Contributor

any luck with the intel srcsatawb? I am having the same issue when updated to Update 1 of vSphere 5.

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BaSergey
Contributor
Contributor

No.

I've replaced server board S3210SHLX with S1200BTL and can't do a clean insatll ESXi 5u1 at all - cyan screen with "hardware incompatibility" message.

However, ESXi 4u1 works fine.

Please, wait for some hours, while I play with my hw (and data Smiley Happy) maybe i can find something.

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BaSergey
Contributor
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Well, megaraid_sas 5.34, that comes with update 1 (both in patch and installation iso) doesn't work with SRCSATAWB in any way. I don't know why.

Here is what I think after all.

- now I have ESXi 4u1 that running fine, performance is very good, last security patch was released in less than a month ago, I can see health of my RAID controller in vSphere client and none of my business tasks requires USB device connection from client to VM. So let it be like that, I'm forget about ESXi 5 until next big upgrade.

- ESXi 5 (w/o update 1) can work with SRCSATAWB, so it's possible to unpack update 1 patch, remove megaraid_sas 5.34 from metadata, pack it back and try to upgrade. Maybe someday I'll try this.

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michaelm91
Contributor
Contributor

well this kind of sucks. its for my homelab and might just consider switching to hyper-v for the time being and messing around with that.

did you try using the intel driver yet?

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?lang=eng&DownloadType=Drivers&OSFullname=VMware*&Dw...

I know the SRCSATAWB is a family of LSI but might not hurt to try Intel's driver.

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BaSergey
Contributor
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Yes, I tried this driver several months ago, when I used ESXi 5 w/o update 1.

It was the first time when I found this trouble.

It seems that VMWare took Intel's driver into its update.

So it rather Intel's problem than VMWare, and it is worst case.

Update 1:

I'd like to try to repack update1 as I described, but now I haven't time for that - my vacation starts in two weeks and I must leave my system up and running stable.

Update 2:

SRCSATAWB based on LSI 1078 chip and on LSI support site there is driver scsi-megaraid-sas-6.06-1vmw.500.0.0.472560 for that chip. VMWare build number looks like one in ESXi 5.0 driver rollup 2.

Someone had to integrate this driver in ESXi 5u1 installation cd and cross his fingers...

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idyllik
Contributor
Contributor

old thread bump, has anyone managed to get this to work?

the only way i've gotten this setup to work is to slipstream the megaraid_sas driver from 5.0(VMware_bootbank_scsi-megaraid-sas_4.32-1vmw.500.0.0.469512.vib) into the 5.1u1 install and install it that way

no matter what other megaraid_sas driver i use either from intel or lsi, it ends up freezing in the same spot

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