ESXi w/Areca RAID controller > 2TB array disk geometry incorrect?

[thln666]

Hi folks,

I'm trying to get my ESXi install to recognize all of my array on my Areca RAID controller. Admittedly I am using the beta drivers from Areca (and that's why I can see the array at all) but the strange thing to me is this: in the Infrastructure console while trying to add the storage, the array shows up at 2.05TB (about the actual size -- it's 4 750GB drives in a RAID5), but the available space is shown at around 50GB. I just initialized the array, so I'm sure it's not got anything on it, so the available size really doesn't make any sense to me.

I have attached a screenshot showing this dialog.

Doing a bit more research I enabled the SSH server and checked out /var/log/messages and found the following:

Sep 3 20:02:20 Hostd: Error Stream from partedUtil while getting partitions: Error: The partition table on /dev/disks/vmhba32:0:0:0 is inconsistent. There are many reasons why this might be the case. However, the most likely reason is that Linux detected the BIOS geometry for /dev/disks/vmhba32:0:0:0 incorrectly. GNU Parted suspects the real geometry should be 1876/64/32 (not 938/128/32). You should check with your BIOS first, as this may not be correct. You can inform Linux by adding the parameter disks/vmhba32:0:0:0=1876,64,32 to the command line. See the LILO or GRUB documentation for more information. If you think Parted's suggested geometry is correct, you may select Ignore to continue (and fix Linux later). Otherwise, select Cancel (and fix Linux and/or the BIOS now).

I've attempted to put the suggested disk parameters into /bootbank/boot.cfg but they don't seem to be picked up by the OS at boot time -- in fact whenever I reboot the kernelopts I set in that file seem to go away. I am running the ESX server from a 2GB flash drive, using methods I found on these boards somewhere (extracting a boot image from the ISO and dd'ing the file to the flash drive).

Anyway, it would be really great if I could use more than 50GB of my 2TB of storage -- this is really a deal-breaker for me, if I can't get this working with all my storage then ESXi is out and I'll go with some other VM solution.

Thanks for your help!

[Dave_Mishchenko]

ESXi (and ESX) only support LUNs up to 2 TB in size. If possible with the Areca controller, you would need to create smaller LUNs with the 4 drives (for example one RAID 5 LUN (using all drives) of 1.05 TB and another LUN of 1.0 TB).

What model of controller are you using and did you have to modify the install to get it to work?

[thln666]

I have an Areca 1210 4 port SATA PCI-E 8x controller; I modified the image on the USB disk after I DD'd it by adding a new /vmfs/volumes/Hypervisor1/oem.tgz with the PCI tables and the Areca beta driver (etc). It seems to be loading correctly on boot, so I think that bit is working.

I'll try smaller array sizes and see what I can do.

Thanks for the help.

[matthewk]

I'm also using an Areca controller. I'm getting excellent performance with the beta driver and am hoping that an official driver makes it into Update 3.

I find it rather annoying that VMFS3 doesn't support larger file systems.

[thln666]

So just to update this thread; I created two separate volumes and now all of the storage is available.

Now my only problem is that I want to use one of those volumes as a drive on a VM and I'm apparently not permitted to do so (in fact the option for a raw device mapping is greyed out).

Anyway, thanks for the help.

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Did you try it as a generic SCSI device?

[jarodnj]

What article did you use to set the drivers in the ESX install disk? I have a 1210 and would like to use it. Much help is appreciated.

[matthewk]

I boot ESXi off of a USB key. Someone else had posted instructions on how to incorporate the 3ware driver into ESXi. I just used those instructions to incorporate the Areca driver instead.

[jarodnj]

Thanks Matt! Do you happen to know where I can find that link? Thanks!

[depping]

google replied: http://www.3ware.com/KB/Article.aspx?id=15416

Duncan

My virtualisation blog:

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

[dbaskin]

I am new to ESXi, I got it up and running and used ftpget to copy oem.tgz to the /bootbank dir but I still don't see my 1210 listed in the VMW IC. Any other suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

[matthewk]

Areca released their own ESXi package here:

If you're following the 3ware instructions, the Areca card might show as "Unknown". The Areca oem.tgz file fixes that somehow.

As far as your specific problem, did you set oem.tgz as chmod 755 and reboot?

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Welcome to the VMware Community forums. You can copy the updated oem.tgz file to the host post install and it will be used when you reboot your host. You'll need console \ ssh access - see this article - http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/ESXi_enable_SSH.php.

[dbaskin]

I just tried it again with a different oem.tgz. I guess the first one I used was old/wrong. It is showing up now.

Thanks

[aren]

Hi,

I use an areca 1222 but get real bad writing performance.

does anyone have the same problem?

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Do you have a battery backed write cache for the controller. That can make a significant improvement in performance.

[aren]

I don't have a battery.

When I copy a 4 Gb file the first Gb will have a trhoughpout of about 200 till 300 MB/S

then it fall down and end with 3-5 MB/s and then stays there (also the cpu usage goes up to 100 percent)

Is this the difference that a battery can resolve ?

[JMills]

I don't have a battery.

When I copy a 4 Gb file the first Gb will have a trhoughpout of about 200 till 300 MB/S

then it fall down and end with 3-5 MB/s and then stays there (also the cpu usage goes up to 100 percent)

Is this the difference that a battery can resolve ?

Which of the two cache modes are you using currently? (Write-Through or Write-Back)

Within the Areca ARC1212/ARC1222 BIOS, it can be viewed/set on a per-volume basis.

[erwinrivera]

Hi Matthew

What model Areca card are you using, looking at cheap pci-e raid controllers at the moment.... thanks

[RedFury]

I use the Areca 1220 SATA2 RAID card, with 6x 1TB WD 7200 32MB-cache disks.

On the disks I have a RAID 6 volume, and a RAID 0 volume with both write-back cache enabled (and no BBU, but use a UPS instead).

I'm also using the beta driver from Areca, and getting a constant throughput of about 100MB/s copying FROM raid 0 TO raid 6.

Be aware that I copy vmdk files within the infrastructure client, so I can measure the ESX performance.

Normal single disks have a constant throughput of about 50MB/s so I think this card performs very well considering the load (reading source file from raid 0, reading parity stripes from 2 raid 6 disks and then writing the data plus 2 parity stripes).

For a review of the performance see: