I have just acquired a ProLiant DL380 G5 server and I need to use the pcie slots so I want to remove the raid controller. Problem is I can't find any connector on the motherboard that I can connect the drive to. I only need 1 drive and in fact I would be happy to use an external hdd if it will boot. I have not tried it. My question is is there a connector on this server that does not include using a pcie slot? If not, can I use the DVD drive to house the 2.5" drive and will it run or I am stuck with losing a pcie slot for a facility I don't need? For the DVD drive option, I have both a 2.5" SAS SSD and SATA SSD drive lying about. I have searched here and online but most questions are about removing the raid facility etc. I want to remove the raid controller so I can use the pcie slot.
I brought a HP Smart Array P410 controller and it is installed and working fine in a HP Prolient Microserver with 4 drives in two RAID 1 arrays.
I didn’t realise however that it came without any cache so would only work by directly writing straight to the disk, and the performance was horrible.
So I then brought the 512MB Flash Backed Write Cache (FBWC) memory module as I was under the impression that with FBWC I would not need a battery. I got this idea from a forum post.
"What do you guys think of the choice between 'BBWC' (battery backed write cache) and 'FBWC' (flash backed write cache)? The flashed based ones use non-volitile memory so need no battery."
After installing the cache module however the server pretty much won’t boot. The P410 has a flashing amber light on it, and from the manual that doesn’t sound good. I’ve managed to get to the on board BIOS once and even managed to get to boot to the HP Array Configuration Utility (ACU) CD once, but every other time the Server continuingly reboots once it get to the POST screen and reads ARRAY INITILIZING %%%.
The one time I reached the ACU, it reported a problem with the Cache Module.
To me, it seems like the cache module is faulty, however the supplier tells me
“Do you have an FBWC battery pack, p/n 587324-001, because that is required for the cache to work. If you have it, please complete an RMA form and we'll send a replacement / credit.”
Does this sound right to you? I’ve been ordering the parts from the US and I don’t want to spend $77 + $40 p&p on a battery, wait a week for the shipping to find the card is faulty, and I don’t want to send back a working card?
I am building server for virtualization and wanted to go with VMWare ESXi 5. I configured RAID10 on 4 disks connected to internal RAID controller IBM M1015 (identical to LSI 9240-8i) and installed ESXi without any problems. Only problem is that copying data to datastore (on the RAID array) on host is slow - around 20MB/s. And I get about the same speed when trying to copy data to shared folder on guest virtual machine. Host network is autonegotiated 1000Full with 1000Mbit switch and I used vmxnet3 vm card in guest machine.
When I install MS Hyper-V on the exact same server with the exact same RAID10 array I get speed around 110MB/s when copying data to the Hyper-V host.
I used latest available drivers for every system:
ESXi 5 - LSI_5_34-455140.zip\scsi-megaraid-sas-5.34-1vmw.500.0.0.406165.x86_64.vib
Windows - 5.2.112
I even updated card firmware to 20.10.1-0077 .
This card is entry level but recommmended on different places for ESXi. What am I doing wrong? Am I missing something?
Today we hit some kind of worst case scenario and are open to any kind of good ideas.
Here is our problem:
We are using several dedicated storage servers to host our virtual machines. Before I continue, here are the specs:
- Dedicated Server Machine
- Areca 1280ml RAID controller, Firmware 1.49
- 12x Samsung 1TB HDDs
We configured one RAID6-set with 10 discs that contains one logical volume. We have two hot spares in the system.
Today one HDD failed. This happens from time to time, so we replaced it. Upon rebuilding a second disc failed. Normally this is no fun. We stopped heavy IO-operations to ensure a stable RAID rebuild.
Sadly the hot-spare disc failed while rebuilding and the whole thing stopped.
Now we have the following situation:
- The controller says that the raid set is rebuilding
- The controller says that the volume failed
It is a RAID 6 system and two discs failed, so the data has to be intact, but we cannot bring the volume online again to access the data.
While searching we found the following leads. I don't know whether they are good or bad:
Mirroring all the discs to a second set of drives. So we would have the possibility to try different things without loosing more than we already have.
Trying to rebuild the array in R-Studio. But we have no real experience with the software.
Pulling all drives, rebooting the system, changing into the areca controller bios, reinserting the HDDs one-by-one. Some people are saying that the brought the system online by this. Some are saying that the effect is zero. Some say, that they blew the whole thing.
Using undocumented areca commands like "rescue" or "LeVel2ReScUe".
Contacting a computer forensics service. But whoa... primary estimates by phone exceeded 20.000€. That's why we would kindly ask for help. Maybe we are missing the obvious?
And yes of course, we have backups. But some systems lost one week of data, thats why we'd like to get the system up and running again.
Any help, suggestions and questions are more than welcome.
Running ESXi4.1 on an HP machine, with only remote access to the host ssh shell and the vmware console (no iLO), is there a way to gather a hardware report from the server? I am specifically interested in finding out whether the disks are SAS or SATA, and whether the p410i controller is equipped with NVRAM and a battery.
Obviously, this being a VM host, rebooting is the last resort (especially since I'm remote to the machine).
I'd also appreciate a pointer to a LiveCD I could use with this machine (in case I do have to restart it) which I could pass on to the person local to the host, so they can boot the system with the CD, gather a report, and send it over to me.
Thanks
UPD: here's a screenshot of what things look like atm:
I guess this means this ESXi has no HP-specific packages, and I need to look for another way? Or am I looking in the wrong place?