RAID Controller e200I

[Ventzi]

Hi to all!

I installed ESX 3.5

on a HP Proliant 350 G5 and my RAID controller is e200i. I made 2 of my 72 GB

HDDs on a RAID 1+0 and 4 x 1TB in RAID 5.

Everything looked very nice, but I can't see my HDDs which are on RAID 5. I

tried to find some drivers for e200i but everywhere is written that those

drivers are included in the install CD. When I log in the server using the Client - I can see my raid controller but can't see my additional HDDs.

So is anybody has any idea what to do? ;o)

Thanks a lot in advance and will appreciate any help!!!

[weinstein5 · Accepted solution]

Welcoem to the Forums - 4x 1 TB in a RAID 5 means your datastoe is 3 TB - ESX can only recognize datastores less then 2 TB - you will need to carve the storage up differently-

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[Ventzi]

Thanks for the answer! Tomorrow I'll try to remove some HDDs and to check again. There aren't so many options than raid 5 ;( This controller is supporting just 1+0, 5 and 1, 0. So probably I'll change the HDDs with smaller ones.

Thank you again and tomorrow I'll write if everything is OK.

[DSTAVERT]

I don't know whether you have the same options that the 400 series has but I would try running the Array Configuration Utility (ACU) from the smartstart CD. You may be able to create "virtual disks" that are on top of your existing array. You can make the virtual disks any size (less than the 2TB). If you don't have the BBWC module for the controller I would get it and enable write caching (done from the ACU). Having the battery module and write caching enabled makes a huge difference in disk performance.

[Ventzi]

Hm, sounds not so difficult. This controller has a battery. And tomorrow will try to

create "virtual disks" that are on top of the existing array. (I hope

there are some manuals about it) ;o)

[DSTAVERT]

The ACU has help files. Shouldn't be too difficult but ask if you have problems.

[Ventzi]

Thanks a lot in advance! ;o)

[Ventzi]

Thanks a lot for the help. It worked very nice, when I made RAID 5 with one spare HDD. And the ESX recognized all the hdd. But their is another 2 problems.

Just a quick review about them (I will open probably another post if I could'nt find any useful info in the forum)

The first one is I can't access any network outside the newly created VM on this server

And the second one is that the newly created VM (Windows Server 2003 R2 standart edition) can't see RAID 5 - I can see only 8 GB from 1.83 TB RAID.

Thanks again for your useful help! ;o)

[Jackobli]

Thanks a lot for the help. It worked very nice, when I made RAID 5 with one spare HDD. And the ESX recognized all the hdd. But their is another 2 problems.

RAID5 does only work with the BBWC, without the Battery, there is only RAID 1/0.

The e200 is capable to create several volumes with different sizes. In my case, I could not boot any more, when I created more than one volume on the first array (I was trying to create a small boot volume for ESXi and a large array for the datastore).

And the second one is that the newly created VM (Windows Server 2003 R2 standart edition) can't see RAID 5 - I can see only 8 GB from 1.83 TB RAID.

Any given VM does not see the real disk hardware, but the allocated storage you gave while creating the guest. 8 GBytes are the default for this OS. You may chose the "advanced/custom" mode of creating guests.