OpenManage Server Administrator 9.2 - webserver only issue

Hello,

With OMSA on ESXi, it's pretty common to install the client onto a VM, the way you are. It only installs the one service, because the VM can't reach the hardware. It would want you to provide the IP of the host, so that the OMSA client on your VM can talk to the OMSA agent on the ESXi host. The other services don't get installed, because the installer thinks it's an unsupported platform, since it doesn't pick up the iDRAC. Below is a link to the install guide of OMSA for ESXi:

<ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell>

Hopefully that helps out. The instance on your Windows VM should only be needing the single service, since it can't query the information directly, and needs to be pointed at the IP of the host, so it can work with the ESXi OMSA agent.

Oh I see, that makes sense. Thanks for the explanation!

My purpose to install the OMSA was to add a new HDD to an existing RAID-5 vmfs5 volume. Unfortunately the iDRAC installed in our server (PowerEdge T630) does not allow me to add a new HDD to a VMFS volume but only to create new vmfs volumes with the blank drives.

As I read in support articles, the OMSA should be capable of doing that in the "Storage" Menu. With the web-server only installation and connecting it to the ESXi host, the "Storage" menu doesn't show up.

It is a little bit off-topic but is there any other way to add a HDD to the vmfs volume, ideally without rebooting the whole machine?

I was so sure that the 13G iDRAC added the functionality to expand an array, but the test system I'm working with isn't presenting the option and the documentation is silent on the subject. With that being the case, OMSA would be your best option. If you did install the host agent and reboot before, then we should be good. If not, you'd need a maintenance window. OMSA should let you perform this expansion from the Virtual Disks sub tab, then from the dropdown menu for the virtual disk, there should be a reconfigure option.

Failing OMSA, you can do this from the F2 BIOS menu, then going to devices, the PERC, then choosing to manage the VD. The pathing I don't have committed to memory, but it should be pretty simple to locate if you need to go there. 

The datasore/filesystem piece you should be able to do in the web client using Datastores > Increase Datastore Capacity. VMware's KB here doesn't make mention of needing a reboot for it, nor did they in some of the other articles they published.

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/6.5/com.vmware.vsphere.storage.doc/GUID-D57FEF5D-75F1-433D-B337-E760732282FC.html

If you have both pieces of OMSA installed, the best way to do what you're looking to do would be to use OMSA to expand the array from the Virtual Disks section, then expand the datastore/filesystem using VMware tools.