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aschackt
Contributor
Contributor

Raid monitoring on ESX

Hi all,

I'm in the process of buying a server and ESX in order to virtualize some of the random servers we got lying around, but I lack experience with ESX (we have two servers running the free VMware server on RH ES 3, so I'm familiar with the application), and was hoping you could help me out:

The server is a dualcore AMD opteron, 4gb ram with two 147gb/15K/8mb SAS-disks which will run Raid1. The Raid-controller is LSI megaraid (8408E) which is supported on the latest version of ESX as far as I can gather.

So to the question: will I be able to monitor the status of the raid-array with ESX? How does this work: ESX is a proprietary OS based on linux right? And will it have built-in monitoring of the array because it supports the controller? Or do I have to install a driver/package myself to monitor it with? (if able to install anything on the ESX OS that is...)

My main concern is of course being able to see the status of the array and hopefully have a notification sent if any trouble.

Thanks for any help! Smiley Happy

brgds

Andre

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12 Replies
kasper
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Best to use a SAN or ISCSI. For local hard drives setup a hot spare

for less worries...

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

What brand server?

We support a number of HW monitoring agents in the SC on name brand servers.

See[url=http://www.vmware.com/pdf/esx30_cfg_mgmt_tools.pdf]Here

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aschackt
Contributor
Contributor

Its a supermicro (AS-2021M-T2R).

So, I'm guessing I'm outta luck?

@ kasper: I'm not -that- worried, current setup will do plenty, but I need the monitoring of course...

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

Is there anything that comes with that box that will monitor the hardware and send snmp traps?

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aschackt
Contributor
Contributor

Not that I'm aware of, its software-based (for win/linux) afaik.

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aschackt
Contributor
Contributor

Btw: is it possible to install 3-party apps on the ESX-os?

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

It is not recommended.

You may want to give it a shot in the test environment.

See this White Paper for details.

zemotard
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Of course, HP, IBM, DELL agent are supported, you can install them directly on your Host.

Best Regards If this information is useful for you, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful".
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CWedge
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

sorts off subject, but I hope you don't plan to run that much on that system

The 2 hds are going to limit your performance...

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caciolli
Expert
Expert

I prefer to monitor local hw, and of course local storage, with dedicated hw monitoring board such as RSA on IBM servers.

IBM has a new monitoring software for local storage ServeRaid 8.40 that works on ESX 3, but avoid using such tools on ESX console....

aschackt
Contributor
Contributor

@ CWedge: I know the HDs will be the bottleneck, but on the VMware server I already have I'm running 11 servers atm and its doing fine. That is with 10K (regular) SCSI disks, and the SAS-disks have way better performance, so I'm pretty sure I will be able to run 10 servers without problems (I never run servers that require much IO or diskspace on vmware, like SQL and similar. We dont have a fiber/san, we're only 8 employees). Furthermore I'm expecting better performance from the ESX-software itself compared to the free VMware server.

Anyways, guess I have to dig deeper in what kind of hardware-monitoring options I have with this server, as it looks difficult getting it done software-wise.

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aschackt
Contributor
Contributor

Update: my hardware-vendor said there is a storage manager I might be able to use, this one:

http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/speed/raid/aac/sm/asm_linux_v4_30-16038_rpm.htm

He was gonna get back to me (if indeed it existed for the raid-controller he had specified), but in the meantime: does anyone have any experience with this? It says "and VMware Server 3", meaning it should work on ESX v3 hopefully?

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