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johnbouma
Contributor
Contributor
‎09-19-2007 12:26 PM

ESX 3.02 with SuperMicro h8Qm3-2 and LSI 1068E SAS RAID

I have a problem with my h8QM3-2 mobo and an installation of ESX for demo purposes. When the time comes to partition the hard drives, VMWare is not able to detect that any are installed at all. The drives in question are 4 SAS 146gb 15k drives that are attached to the SAS IC on-board. When i drop to the console in the installer and do 'lspci', i get LSI Logic /Symbios SCSI RAID: Unknown Device 0059 Rev. 4 and when i check out the pci.ids file is shows that the 1068E is mapped to 1000:0058, where mine is \[..]59. Any ideas, suggestions or experiences like mine would be a help. Also, if i use a noprobe option when i boot the installer, none of the LSI drivers work.

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10 Replies
Rumple
Virtuoso
Virtuoso
‎09-19-2007 01:32 PM

You are probably not going to have any luck with the controller. If the controller is not on the HCL (or doesn't emulate a controller on the HCL) then the vmkernel (not service console/installer) will not be able to load the drivers

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johnbouma
Contributor
Contributor
‎09-19-2007 02:40 PM

The thing is, the controller is on the HCL. LSISAS1068E has support in 3.01 and 3.02

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Rumple
Virtuoso
Virtuoso
‎09-19-2007 02:49 PM

my guess is the controller has support when its not integrated into a chipset (which probably uses a different firmware/identifier).

I imagine a name brand card (dell/hp,etc) would probably work just fine....

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johnbouma
Contributor
Contributor
‎09-19-2007 02:56 PM

OK thanks. One more thing, though. Supermicro's support said that they send one of their server systems with this as the mobo to VMWare for certification and recieved it. Their assumption was that only the SAS RAID was used (maybe not true??) but the server name they gave me was AS-2041M-32R. For their part, they believe that the motherbaord has been certified as ESX compliant.

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J-H
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
‎09-20-2007 04:39 AM

Have you configured the disks in a hardware RAID set?

I had this issue with a Intel S5000PSL based system.

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johnbouma
Contributor
Contributor
‎09-20-2007 08:53 AM

Hmm, no i do not believe that I have. The RAID controller has MPT FUSION based 'software RAID.' Hardware RAID differe from this, would be my guess, but how, I have no idea.

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microfoundry
Contributor
Contributor
‎09-30-2007 10:10 AM

Hey John - I have an interest in this board, so I though I'd check to see how it worked out for you?

TIA,

Terry

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devzero
Expert
Expert
‎09-30-2007 01:54 PM

shouldn´t be a problem with some tuning - see http://communities.vmware.com/message/695520

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souking
Contributor
Contributor
‎10-11-2007 12:05 PM

I think the LSI 1068E IR mode doesn't support by ESX 3.02. You can get the IT firmware from Supermicro ftp site:

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ArildS
Contributor
Contributor
‎10-21-2008 03:45 AM

I know this post is a bit old, but this is nice to know.

After downloading and installing the IT BIOS for the LSI 1068E embedded controller you need to enter the SAS address. You'll find this address on the outside of the leftmost slot on the H8QM3-2 motherboard. The leftmost slot is the management card slot placed right next to the PCI-X slot. You may need a mirror (or even 2) to be able to read it Smiley Happy

Is in the form of: 5003048000????? or simething similar. 16 hex digits.

The H8QM3-2 motherboard is the one used in the Supermicro AS2041M-32R+B server. Which is a very good none btw Smiley Happy

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