Storage HCL and health status monitoring

[fbj]

If I purchase a SAS or SATA controller like the LSI LSI1068SE controller or Adaptec 5805 will the system show health status information for the controller? I have a Dell Perc 5/i I placed in a white box and saw health status info. When I place an older (not officially support) LSI card in the system it worked but I don't see health status info. I'm not too worried about health status for the server as I can grab that via nagios and a IPMI card but I would like to know about RAID failures.

Regarding the IPMI would ESXi see health status for a server (Supermicro) with a IPMI card even though it's not on the HCL?

Regards,

fj

[RParker]

> Regarding the IPMI would ESXi see health status for a server (Supermicro) with a IPMI card even though it's not on the HCL?

If you use a card that isn't on the HCL all bets are off. If you are using a supported card, then everything should work. It's pretty much black and white. You are on your own to try it and see if it works, but I wouldn't expect much. If you have to purchase a card anyway, why not purchase a card that's known on the HCL?

[Dave_Mishchenko]

See this thread for a duscussion on CIM providers for LSI / Adaptec cards - http://communities.vmware.com/message/1004988.

For ESXi to see IPMI data, SuperMicro would need to provide CIM providers to VMware to include on the install CD.

[fbj]

I intend to buy a card on the HCL but wanted to know if they all provide health monitoring. From's Dave's post below apparently only the LSI RAID cards do. This explains why my Dell Perc 5 cards shows health info. As for the IPMI I've a request into Supermicro for more info on which IPMI cards have a CIM provider for esx.

Now my concern is that I could get a Supermicro server on the HCL but may not get health status info. Fortunately I found that out before buying.

[fbj]

Thanks. This is exactly what I was looking for. I assume that servers on the HCL may also not provide health status info (power supply fail, etc). This is somewhat annoying but at least I know. We are looking to get servers that provide complete health status info to deploy for clients that are not near by or that we manage remotely. It would be best to know when something breaks -- before they call.

[Dave_Mishchenko]

I assume that servers on the HCL may also not provide health status info (power supply fail, etc).

That's the case. Rather than add a 3rd party RAID controller you might be better off with a Supermicro server that has a RAID card that will work with ESXi and the IPMI card (I'm assuming they would have such a model). That way you can do all your monitoring via the IPMI card and not have to rely on CIM / SNMP in ESXi.