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BHagenSPI
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Optimal settings on LSI 9361-8i for VSAN

I have the documentation on this card, and of course "enable jbod" is the main setting to allow VSAN to work; but I'm wondering if there are other settings on this specific card that work best for VSAN. Our environment is about to be 4x ESXi 6.x hosts, each with 524Gb RAM, a single 400Gb SSD Cache drive, and 3x 6Tb spinny disks (all disks are on the HCL). We'll also have a "normal" Samsung EVO ssd for the OS (we have a bunch of them laying around so I figured I'd use them for something!). We'll mirror this setup offsite, run replication and SRM for business continuity.

So: has anybody already done the hard work and found optimal settings for this card, for running VSAN in an HCI environment?

Thanks!

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zdickinson
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Good morning, we have a similar card.  Other than enabling pass through, there isn't anything else to do on the card.  Very important to make sure the firmware and drivers line up.  Thank you, Zach.

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zdickinson
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Good morning, we have a similar card.  Other than enabling pass through, there isn't anything else to do on the card.  Very important to make sure the firmware and drivers line up.  Thank you, Zach.

BHagenSPI
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Thanks for the reply Zach; I marked your reply as the answer because you were good enough to reply. 🙂

In addition to enabling JBOD, I've also found that I need to uncheck the "Spin down Unconfigured drives" and "Spin down Host Spares" boxes, otherwise some of my drive would randomly go offline because they had spun down. Other than those changes, all else stays the same. Too bad this card isn't on the HCL for 6.5 yet!!

Here are my "Notes to Self" on how to get to these check boxes, in case it helps anybody else.

To Configure LSI card

    1. Ctrl+R from bootup screen
    2. Delete any RAID arrays and unconfigure all drives
    3. Ctrl+N to the Ctrl Mgmt tab
      1. Arrow up three times, space bar on Enable JBOD (now it should have an X in it)

    1.jpg

  1. Arrow down twice, apply
  2. Arrow up once, next
  3. Arrow down once, Manager Power Save
  4. Uncheck both "spin down" boxes, OK

    2.jpg

  1. Esc, reboot