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3rd party (Plextor PX-128M2S) SSD on H700 controller in R710
Background:
1) R710 (6 x 3.5" backplane) with 4 x 2TB WD WD2003FYYS drive (non-Dell drive) populated on the H700 controller slot 0 to 3.
2) The drives were formed into 2 x RAID 10 sets. Each is about 2TB.
3) Installed ESXi 4.1 Update 1 Build 348481 (download from Dell website). All 2 RAID sets recognized in ESXi as 2 datastores. VMs running properly without any problem.
4) All firmware like BIOS, backplane, H700 RAID controller, iDRAC and Lifecycle Controller are up-to-date (as of 11 Aug 2011).
5) We have an idle Plextor PX-128M2S 2.5" SATA/6Gbps SSD idle in office. We plugged it into an ICY Dock adapter (MB882SP-1S-1B) to conver it to a 3.5" HDD block. Plugged it into a Dell 3.5" HDD tray and loaded to slot 4.
6) We want to have the ESXi 'see' the SSD as the 3rd datastore. However, there is error posted on the front panel LCD.
Observation:
1) System boot up successfully. Go to the RAID utility by Ctrl-R and able to see the SSD without problem, e.g. model number, SMART status, link speed (it shown 6Gb/s). The PD Mgmt screen said the drive is Ready, while other HDD were Online.
2) the front panel LCD turned to Amber after the system running for few mins. Error message: Fault detected on Drive 4.
3) Repeat the whole process with drive loaded to slot 5. Same issue observed while error message become: Fault detected on Drive 5.
4) For the tray's LED, the upper one (status indicate online or not) was blinking Amber, while lower one was dimmed.
Question:
1) Is that possible for SSD to be connected in this way and to be found in ESXi as a datastore? We verified this SSD without problem by plugged that directly to the motherboard's SATA port on another DIY Intel server with Intel S5520HCVR motherboard + Chenbro RM21706 chassis.
2) If the H700 won't support non-Dell branded SSD, any way to connect our SSD to to the R710? I can't find any location inside the R710 to let properly mount that 2.5" SSD. We already have the SD card adapter installed near the front panel for installing ESXi.
We don't want to switch to the PCI-E SSD solution as we didn't have spare budget and we want to use that idle SSD although we know PCI-E will work for this.
Any comment and recommendation are welcome! Thanks!
Dev Mgr
9.3K Posts
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August 11th, 2011 08:00
You would have to make the SSD a raid set (e.g. single disk raid 0) before the raid controller will let the disk be seen by the OS/Hypervisor (ESXi in your case).
This wouldn't be the cause of the amber light though.
Hon Cheung Ng
12 Posts
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August 22nd, 2011 00:00
I further checked the RAID utility that there the options similar to set the SSD as any RAID disk or virtual disk are all got dimmed. As the R710 is running ESXi, there is no RAID manager software can be used to configure the disk into RAID array other than the RAID utility I used during the system boot up.
Do you think the RAID option was dimmed as the SSD is unsupported (which I mentioned that the Amber light is flashing)? Or I missed anything?
Dev Mgr
9.3K Posts
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August 22nd, 2011 18:00
Dell has a version of OMSA for ESXi. You can install this (does take 2 reboots) and then install the Windows version on any Windows box (doesn't even have to be a Dell). Open the server administrator and on the webpage you'll be asked for 3 things; the system you want to manage (this would be your ESXi box), the username (root for ESXi) and the password.
From here you should have a storage option that allows you to check, configure, reconfigure and create raid sets.