LSI SAS 3041E-R raid monitoring under ESXi 5.0?

[pepeljug]

Hello everybody,

I'm ESXi newbie, previously was on Citrix Xen

In may whitebox setup I have LSI SAS 3041E-R configured in raid 0 (2 disk 500GB mirroring). Is it possible and how to monitor raid status in ESXi or remotely.

Under ESXi/Configuration/StorageAdapters I can see LSI 1064E listed as vmhba3 - Block SCSI device

Under Devices&Path additional info as if it is a regular IDE drive.

I wonder is it possible to see raid mirror status/helath etc. And how?

[brucekconvergen]

If you search the LSI site for VMware ESXi drivers, you'll find a "LSI Provider" module that is listed for some of the newer LSI SAS/SATA cards that enables this... I have found that it does work on older Megaraid cards, but your results may vary -- I would only test this on a non-production server at first in case it breaks something (if the driver is not listed specifically for your card).  The one that I've used with success with a variety of cards is found here: http://www.lsi.com/products/storagecomponents/Pages/MegaRAIDSAS9260-8i.aspx  --- look for VMware SMIS Provider.   Again, this may not work with your particular card, but maybe there's one available for yours, I'd contact LSI Support and see what they say.

[pepeljug]

I read and watched educational video about MegaRAID Storage Manager & ESXi. I'll give it a try and post results.

I posted question because I haven't found anything specific for LSI SAS 3041E-R, and was thinking because it is frequently used afordable raid controler someone has some experience with it.

Anyway, thank you.

UPDATE: Tried, and its not working.

[AnybodyM · Accepted solution]

>UPDATE: Tried, and its not working.

I cannot confirm this. Here’s how I got Health Monitoring for the LSI SAS 3041E-R to work (in ESXi v5.1).

1) There is no VMWare Provider available on the download page for the 3041E, but the one from newer controllers works fine – even though the card is not even listed in the readme of those SMSI Downloads as compatible.

2) I went to the download page for the LSI 9260-8i and downloaded the newest VMWARE SMIS Provider which currently is “00.39.V0.02 _VMWare_Provider.zip” (for ESXi v5)

3) Switch ESXi into Maintenance mode and upload the VIB file that is contained in the ZIP to /tmp/ using SCP.

4) login using SSH and run: esxcli software vib install -v /tmp/vmware-esx-provider-lsiprovider.vib

5) it should now say: “update completed successfully, but the system needs to be rebooted” and “VIBs Installed: LSI_bootbank_lsiprovider_500.04.V0.39-0006″

6) exit Maintenance Mode and reboot ESXi

7) In vSphere Client => Configuration => Health Status you should now see “Storage” entries for the SAS1064E – which is the chipset the 3041E-R card is based on.