help setting up 5 hard drives

[Dyno69]

i'm pretty new to this whole VMWare thing. i have a computer with a Gigabyte GA-M55Plus-S3G mobo which has 2 IDE Controllers and 4 Sata ports with a Nvidia raid that does 0, 1, 0+1 and 5.

so i've installed VMWare i think some GSX thing so i installed a IDE 40GB has my main hard drive for OS. then when i try to install the 4 Sata drives after i get 3 in on the 4th one it says something about no more IDE. is there anyway to get around this error and install my last sata hard drive so VMware can detect 5 Hard drives.

Thanks

[kharbin]

If you are using GSX as you say, then installing and configuing hard drives is completely a function of the underlying operating system, not VMware. GSX is an application that sits atop a already configuered OS and it assumes you have drive connectivity.

If the controller can detect the drives and configure them with in a RAID group, and the OS can detect the RAID group and assign mount point or drive letter, then VMware can use it. No diffrent than any other application.

If you are using ESX, then you'll need to use hardware on the compatibility list.

my 2 cents

Ken Harbin

www.esXpress.com

[Dyno69]

Hi there thanks for your reply.

so i have VMWare Server 1.04 running underneath windows XP Pro. within windows xp i can see all 5 drives running and fully formatted. i'm trying to run all 5 drives as individual as i'm trying to run freeNAS on vmware as a nasServer, with the error i'm recieving the no more IDE to add does that mean that VMware cant run 5 hard drives at once?

[kharbin]

OK, now I get it. You want to assign all the physical drive individually to a VM.

A VMs hardware is identical to a physical computer in the way it works. VMs can have IDE or SCSI drives. Sounds like you are using IDE. And just like a physical computer, you are limited to 4 IDE drives (unless you add additional hardware). VM is the same, 1 IDE controller (virtual of course) that can support 4 channels.

You will need to change your VM to be SCSI based. This will allow the VM to have 15 drives with no problems.

Ken Harbin

www.esXpres.com

[Dyno69]

ok thanks that makes sense, so to make my VMware SCSI i need a SCSI adapter card? or is there a free way? its weird that vmware will see SATA hard drives as IDE i wish it would see SATA as SATA and IDE as IDE.

[kharbin]

The Vm is hidden from the real underlying hardware, thats why its called virtual. VMware provides a virtual IDE or SCSI interface, that is in turn passed to the underlying OS, which in turn talks to SATA controller. So no physical SCSI adapter need, but you do need to add a virtual SCSI adapter to the VM. This is done in the VMware GUI for that VM. Nothing to purchase.

Ken Harbin

www.esXpress.com

[Dyno69]

me again, so when i go to add and click on generic scsi device it only give me an option for a CDROM nothing about a hard drive am i going the wrong way to install a physical HD as a SCSI HD?

[kharbin]

OK, playing with my GSX, I see if you are accessing the SATA disks as raw devices, on mine, it presents them to me as IDE, and still only allows up to the maximum of 4 as expected.

Is there a reason you need to use raw devices only instead of using the default VMDK files?

K

[Dyno69]

hi again, i'm completley new to this so i might be doing this all wrong i'll explain what i wanted to do.

i have my IDE drive which is a 40GB WD for the Operating System(freeNAS) then i have 4 sata drives 2x750GB and 2x1TB drives that i want to use for data storage so 1 750 for Misc, 1 750 for Music, 1 TB for Movies and 1 TB for TV Shows.

so when i installed freeNAS i used the 40GB and now want to have the 4 sata drives registered in VMWare so that freeNAS can see them and i can use them for storage so i need to use 5 Hard drives in total. if theres something that i can do instead of adding a physical drive but still use 5 different hard drives please tell me how.

thanks

[kharbin · Accepted solution]

Just install the hard drives, format them, and make available to the OS (as E:, F:, etc if Windows, /u, /u1, etc. if Linux).

Create a new VM, select custom.

Whe adding virtual hard drives, select SCSI.

You'll need to select a virtual controller, use LSILogig unless the guest OS does not support it.

Then it will ask to create a new vDisk, use existing vDisk, or use a raw device. You can use either, but if using raw disks, loose all the great benefits of a VM.

Then it will allow you to assign a SCSI channel, 0:0 by default.

Add a second drive, SCSI, make 0:1, etc. until all added.

Also, the manual explains this very well, as well as the theory behind VMs. This reading will make this much more clear.

K

[Dyno69]

when i try to make a new VDisk it doesnt let me use one of my big sata drives only my small IDE drive thats lke 40GB for the OS. if i try to make my IDE drive a SCSI drive and my 4 sata drives as physical drives it deosnt boot beacuse SCSI isnt bootable.

[RParker]

I think he is trying to use the physical drive feature in VM Server, which isn't available in ESX. You can assign an entire drive as a drive letter, but ESX doesn't provide this feature, so I don't think he can get this.

He may be able to get the equivalent, by assigning the sizes of the storage, but he can't have direct access to each drive, I believe that's what he is trying to do, but ESX can't do this.

[RParker]

Bootable is a feature of the OS, some OS have to have a driver to "see" the drive at boot, thus allowing to boot OFF that drive. What OS are you doing this with?

Also it depends on the order, You need to add the drives in order, so remove all the drives, and add SCSI first.

[Dyno69]

so i'm running 5 hard drives on my PC

1.Western Digital 40GB with Windows XP Loaded on it and VMWare Running 2x75GB both empty and 2x1TB both empty.

i'm running VMWare Server 1.04

Went New Virtual Machine and Custom, Selected Other, FreeBSD, Named it FreeNAS, Pressed Next to Keep it private and selected 1 Processor and 512MB of Memory, and bridged network.

Selected the LSI Logic and selected create a new virtual disk went to SCSI, and selected 8GB named it mainos.vmdk and then it allocated the disc space

When the Space is allocated, Seleced Edit this virutal machine settings, clicked on CDROM(IDE 1:0), clicked Use ISO image and under virutal device node selected SCSI(0:1) and startred virutal machine to install the freeNAS OS.

but when it starts to load it gives me the error

"No bootable CD, floppy or hard disk was detected.However one or more CD-Rom drives were connected as SCSI drives. You cannot use a SCSI CD-ROM as a boot device. If you intend to boot from this CD-ROM drive please connect it as an IDE Drive."

so if i change the CD-Rom to IDE(0:0) and restart the Virtual machine and boot from the same CD-Rom it lets me install the OS

Once the OS is installed and i remove the IDE CD-ROm and boot form teh SCSI HD it boots great. but the moment i add 1-4 IDE hard drives it wont boot fromt he SCSI hard drive again.

[Dyno69]

Well after reloading 100 times i've finally got the SCSI HD booting and now have my 4 storage drives, thanks to you 2 who helped me.

Thanks