Host Can't See Local Disk for vSAN

[Rumz79]

Hi

We are currently building our first vSAN host and have fallen at the first hurdle. Our host config is as follows:

IBM x3650 m4 7915
ServerRaid M5110e
1x 200GB SSD SATA
1x 600GB SSD 10k SAS
IBM Vmware USB Hypervisor Key with 5.5 u1 image installed.

The issue is that the esx host cannot see the 2 disks that are fitted. Under the Storage Adaptors it lists the MegaRAID SAS Fusion Controller (not sure where it gets the name Fusion from). When I click on the controller the 2 disks do not appear under devices or paths. If I go in to the RAID controller at boot up and configure the disks individually to be RAID 0 then ESX can see both the disks but obliviously cannot identify the Drive Type for the SSD. I think there is a work around for this but I know it’s not ideal, and according to the vSAN HCL the Raid controller above does support passthrough. Getting the passthrough to work is proving difficult, but I’m hoping it’s just something simple I have missed. Has anyone got an idea where I should start looking?

Thanks in advance.

[crosdorff]

I think you need to enable the pass-through option manually in your raid-controller.

[CHogan]

Correct.

One nuance of using a RAID-0 configuration to present devices to the ESXi host is that solid state disks do not appear as SSDs to the host – the Is_SSD flag is set to false. In a nutshell, you need to setup a PSA claimrule that claims the device and sets the option enable_ssd.

KB Article 2013188 describes the process in detail.  In a nutshell, you must create the claimrule that includes the SSD device, unclaim the SSD device, load the claim rules once again, run the rules and finally reclaim the SSD device.

HTH

Cormac

[Rumz79 · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the tip CHogan, It did work but upon reading the downsides of using this method in your 'Essential Virtual SAN' book I have persisted to get the pass-through to work on the raid controller.

After some further research it turns out that I had to physically remove the RAID's 1GB Flash cache from the motherboard. By removing this it sets the RAID controller in to. what it calls. iMR mode which allows for JBOD pass-thru.

Thanks all for your responses.