MegaRAID 300-8XLP supported by megaraid2 driver?

[eger]

I could not see the MegaRAID 300-8XLP explicitely listed on the supported IO devices list for 3.5. However it uses the same megaraid2 driver that is listed. Could this possibly work to install my VI3.5 evaluation on to test with or is it more likely the specific device ID for this card is not in the driver and will not be recognized?

This is a SATA2 controller and I am wondering if all SATA RAID card devices were specifically removed from the drivers as it is not considered an enterrpise storage solution... Though I am willing to make a trip to the data center and find out if someone else has had luck with other SATA cards on the ESX megaraid2 driver

[Dave_Mishchenko]

The card isn't supported, but it can be made to work - http://www.run-virtual.com/?p=88. In that example, the person is using an IDE drive for the install of ESX. If you just have the card with SATA drives, that could still likely be made to work.

[eger]

Thanks,

I also found this thread just now: http://communities.vmware.com/message/451922

I cannot tell if they were able to actually install on the card and then a reboot required changes to boot properly from it or if they were just using it. I think I will actually go test this out and then report back to this thread on my findings.

[rpartmann]

Hi,

i think this is the same controller as the Intel SCRS28x (PCI-X),

tested another SATA Controller

Intel SCRS28x / PCI-X 8xSATA Firmware rev. 814D RaidBIOS H431

http://www.intel.com/design/servers/raid/srcs28x/index.htm

/etc/vmware/pciid/megaraid2.xml

as i figured out in that case it was important to also add the SUBSYSTEM ID´s because the boot process didn´t continue.

hth,

Reinhard.

ps: Award points if you find answers helpful. Thanks.

[eger]

So I followed the instructions in the thread in my previous post and it does work. I was able to get it up and running no problem. It seems that the drivers for the cards are there. But VMWare is only supporting a specific list. As long as you tell the install which driver to load it will install on it. Then you need to use the service console to edit the device files to tell VI3 it is OK to use.

I only needed to edit /etc/vmware/vmware-devices.map and after esxcfg-boot -p and reboot it worked fine. I also had a network issue as the other user in the thread I posted had. However I just disabled iptables and then ran esxcfg-firewall -l and it was up and running.

Hopefully this information is helpful to others. Thanks for the posts guys!

[eger]

After loading megaraid2 driver during install and editing the device map after install via service console all is working perfect on the MegaRAID 300-8XLP