Dell VRTX Virtual disks not recognised by Esxi

Question

Hi,

I would like to ask for some help with VMWare ESXi and Dell VRTX. I have a Dell VRTX with 4 blades/hosts (M640).

In the VRTX, I created 2 Virtual Disks, mapped the Adapters to the 4 blades and assigned the Virtual Disks to the Adapters. All went fine.

Then, I installed ESXi 7.0 in each blade/hosts (M640) following Dell advice. I also configured the IP address for each hosts. All went fine.

I open Internet Explorer and use the IP address of any host and I can see the ESXi environment for the host I am connected to. I still have not installed vCenter though.

The problem is that the Virtual Disks don’t appear under Storage in ESXi. Even if I re-scan or try to create a new Datastore, the Virtual Disks still don’t show up. All the adapters are showing healthy, although there is no Shared Perc 8 on the list

The VRTX and host servers have the latest drivers.

I’ve been stuck on this for days and I really don’t know what else to do.

Can anyone help me, please?

Thanks,

Cesar

Dell-DylanJ · Answer

Hi Cesar,

I talked to a colleague of mine that works on the modular team. He said he didn't believe there was VRTX support for ESXi 7.0. I looked through documentation, but didn't see anything to contradict that statement. I did, however, find a SPERC driver on VMware's HCL. You might see if installing this resolves the issue (unless this is the driver you had mentioned in your post). If you have something showing that the VRTX is supposed to support ESXi 7.0, sharing the link would be helpful.

Could you also share the link to the driver you installed for the SPERC, if it isn't the one I found?

A driver issue is my best guess, because it sounds like It's working elsewhere. You might test that theory with another operating system. Could potentially put that idea to bed, if the other OS also doesn't see your storage.

https://dell.to/3fO9Kcb

CesarBSL2 · Answer

Hi,

Thank you for your reply. As your colleague said the VRTX does not support ESXi 7.0. I was told by a Dell engineer that it did, but it is not the case.

ESXi 7.0 does not load the shared perc 8 file during installation, and the drive in VMware is not valid for this VRTX. I had to go back to ESXi 6.7 U3.

Regards,

Cesar

Origin3k · Answer

The HCL https://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/detail.php?deviceCategory=io&productid=40343&releaseid=448&deviceCategory=io&details=1&keyword=perc8&page=1&display_interval=10&sortColumn=Partner&sortOrder=Asc listet the PERC8 certified for ESXi 7.0 but the driver comes not with the ESXi vanilla ISO and is provided by the Vendor (Dell). I havent seen a PERC related packages in the Driver&Tools section of vmware.com and havent try to install 7.0 by using the Dell Custom ISO on a VRTX.

I suggest to reopen your #SR.

Hint: Certain HCL entries about 7.0 support are currently wrong.

Regards,
Joerg

pragg12 · Answer

Hi,

I had same issue, discussed with support and they pointed me to this thread. I tried below which worked for me and I now have a running ESXi 7 install on M640 with shared perc8 driver. Hope this helps you and others.

Install latest Dell ESXi 6.7 image. Then upgrade to latest ESXi 7.0 using vCenter 7 lifecycle update manager. This should work with VCSA 6.7 update manager as well. After the upgrade, I found the shared perc8 driver remains there and the storage was recognized by ESXi 7. The shared perc8 driver version in ESXi 6.7 is mentioned as compatible for ESXi 7 per vmware compatibility matrix.

Below are the ESXi versions which I used:

VMware-VMvisor-Installer-6.7.0.update03-15160138.x86_64-DellEMC_Customized-A04.iso

VMware-VMvisor-Installer-7.0.0-16324942.x86_64-DellEMC_Customized-A02

sankar_cr · Answer

Hi

Even i have faced the same error on using VMware-VMvisor-Installer-7.0.0-15843807.x86_64-DellEMC_Customized-A00.iso the PERC & VD is not getting detected. Now from the portal the A02 image is unable to be downloaded. VMware-VMvisor-Installer-7.0.0-16324942.x86_64-DellEMC_Customized-A02

CR Sankar

Robert.Kl · Answer

I have a similar situation ...

We have 12 VRTX Systems in our subsidiaries and I was updating the System in Belgium today.

First Blade (M630)

Lifecycle Manager from VMware said it is incompatible because of two installed "custom vibs"

dcism and Openmanage

I deinstalled them with

esxcli software vib remove -n dcism -n OpenManage

after a reboot Update with the customized Dell ESX7 image was smooth and successfull

the second blade behavied different

it stated also a QLogic driver net-qlge as incompatible. Driver was not in used - I removed it. After reboot update with the VMware Lifecyclemanager ... and after reboot ... a message that the system is not able to create a ramdisk ... reboot and on the console came a "Hypervisor not foud" - congratulations!

I tried a direct update with the iso image mounted into the IDRAC virtual console ... found my old 6.7U3 ... updating - reboot - stuck with Hypervisor not found ...

Then I did a clean install and found out, that the SharedPerc8 was missing ...

Called the support and got a download link on the VMware site https://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/detail.php?deviceCategory=io&productid=34775&vcl=true

Shered Perc is on the compatibility list from VMware - but the download link was not working ...

Solution - i found the 6.5 driver on the VMware Site here: https://my.vmware.com/de/web/vmware/downloads/details?downloadGroup=DT-ESXI65-AVAGO-DELL-SHARED-PERC8-068069000-1OEM&productId=705

Download it, unzip it and transfer the "inner" zip to the ESX

Install is easy

Enable SSH on your ESX host

transfer the file with WinSCP to the ESX /tmp directory

then ssh to the host ...

esxcli software vib install -d /tmp/VMW-ESX-6.5.0-dell_shared_perc8-06.806.90.00-offline_bundle-6990897.zip

reboot and the ESX has its datastore

Hope it helps!

PowerEdge Hardware General

Dell VRTX Virtual disks not recognised by Esxi

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