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StateMCSM
Contributor
Contributor
‎08-11-2009 08:23 AM

ESXi - How to add additional datastores

I am running ESXi 3.5 on a Dell 2950 rack server with local storage only. I have four drives configured in a RAID 10 array. We need to add another datastore for a data server and I have two slots open. I am going to add two 300GB drives and I want to configure them in a RAID1, which is slower but provides the redundancy I need. The server currently has four VMs running in production.

What steps do I need to take to add the drives and configure them?

I'm assuming I will need to shutdown all VMs, install the drives, and boot the server with the HP startup CD. From there, configure the two unconfigured drives, reboot into ESXi and locate the new datastore. Does this sound correct?

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ShaneWendel
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
‎08-11-2009 08:26 AM

Dell 2950 should have a PERC bios that you can configure the RAID card in. You will have to reboot to get into it.

ESX should pickup the storage, then you just need to go into the host properties and configure it as VMFS in the Storage menu. It's pretty similar to adding storage to a Windows server.

-

Shane Wendel, VCP

----------------- Shane Wendel VCP: vSphere 4 VCP: VI3 http://fatalsync.wordpress.com
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AndreTheGiant
Immortal
Immortal
‎08-13-2009 01:04 AM

Dell 2950 should have a PERC bios that you can configure the RAID card in. You will have to reboot to get into it.

The reboot is not needed if you install OpenManage inside the service console.

When it is enable you can go to https://ESX_IP:1311/ and configure your new virtual disk.

Then do a storage adapter rescan and create the new datastore.

But if you have ESXi (in this case you are in the wrong community area Smiley Wink ) it could be difficult install OpenManage.

Andre

Andrew | http://about.me/amauro | http://vinfrastructure.it/ | @Andrea_Mauro
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