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November 18th, 2022 14:00

Dell VRTX Shared PERC 8 Not Available on VMware ESXi 8

I have three M620's and a "new" refurbished M630 in a Dell VRTX Chasis.

I installed VMware ESXi 8 Custom Dell ISO on the M630. It does not recognize the Shared PERC 8 controller for the direct attached storage.

I looked at the compatibility matrix for ESXi 8 and noted that the M620 and M630 blades for VRTX were absent. They are present in ESXi 7. I also see that I can download the Shared PERC 8 controller for ESXi 7u3, but not ESXi 8.

It seems that Dell is still selling the VRTX, though this may be its last year.

= What are Dell's plans to support VMware ESXi 8 and future editions? =
= Is there any way to install a driver for the Shared PERC 8 on ESXi 8? =
Everything else about the installation appears to be working on the blade.

I would like to get about 5+ more years out of this investment. Everything we run is super fast and has been super reliable, except for one iDRAC that became unresponsive on an M620 lately that I'm still looking into resolving.

Thank you.

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8.6K Posts

November 22nd, 2022 08:00

christierneycfwt,

 

Being that the support page only shows support to ESXi 7, I am not surprised it is having driver issues. At this point I am not certain if they will be adding support for ESXi 8 on the VRTX blades, mostly due to how new ESXi 8 is it may take time.

 

Hope this helps.

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3.4K Posts

January 16th, 2023 10:00

Hello Robert.Kl,

 

Unfortunately there is no ESXi 8.x Driver support for SharedPERC on VRTX.

Information related to ESXi 8.0 and deprecated support for SPERC and other devices using the below VMware KB link.

VMware KB : Devices deprecated and unsupported in ESXi 8.0 (88172). https://dell.to/3WeB0Fw

 

See if you can view this Dell article. You may have to sign in to your account or create an account and log in to see the article.

 

VRTX - SPERC - Shared PERC 8 and VMware ESXi 8.x

Summary: No ESXi 8.x Driver support for SPERC on VRTX : Article Number: 000205183

No current or future driver development is planned for ESXi 8.x OS with SPERC. Driver development stopped at VMware ESXi 7.x

https://dell.to/3iIojF7

 

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3.7K Posts

November 20th, 2022 19:00

Hello, thanks for choosing Dell. It looks like

https://dell.to/3ErXsDV

 

it can support ESXi 7.X only, I'm afraid.

November 21st, 2022 15:00

Thanks. I did see that is is not listed. What are Dell's plans to support VMware ESXi 8 and future editions?

The reason I ask is it appears that the VRTX is still being sold and supported.
https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/povw/poweredge-vrtx

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3.7K Posts

November 21st, 2022 22:00

November 22nd, 2022 08:00

Thank you. It sounds like there is no information on whether this will be supported or not in future releases. I'll wait it out, which is unfortunate.

November 22nd, 2022 08:00

Thanks, but as I mentioned, I installed VMware ESXi 8 Custom Dell ISO on the M630. It does not recognize the Shared PERC 8 controller for the direct attached storage.

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3.2K Posts

January 16th, 2023 06:00

Hi,

sorry I did not understand your problem.

Could you please explain to me your exact failure with your PERC?

Or do you only ask outside of this thread topic how other users use their VRTX?

 

Did you have any other questions?

 

Regards Martin

January 16th, 2023 10:00

Martin,

He is stating that there are drivers for the M640 but do not include the Shared PERC 8 drivers for the VRTX chassis. Since the M640 only runs on a chassis, it's not useful when the chassis drivers are not available in vSphere 8. The failure is in the lack of drivers from Dell.

January 16th, 2023 10:00

Thanks! I'm glad to see an official removal of support document. Before, it was a guess.

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1 Message

November 22nd, 2023 12:20

Sorry I do not understand.

EOL of VMware 7.x is 2nd April 2025. We have support for some of our VRTX till 2026 how will that work? Shall I use an unsupported and unsafe OS on our VRTX's? We have several of them.

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2 Posts

January 25th, 2024 07:52

unsupported workaround which seems to work

copy the driver file from a esxi7.0 (latest) installation from /bootbank/dellshar.v00 to the esxi8 installation on the vrtx blade server and add it to /bootbank/boot.cfg in the modules line after s.v00 module, then reboot.

NOT SUPPORTED, not update safe - just for testing purpose.

2 Posts

January 25th, 2024 16:21

@HannesF​ 

Thank you for the possible work-around.

Would you be willing to put together a more detailed version/explanation of this - I'd love to give it a test - but I'm not super familiar with the exact commands needed to pull this off.

Thank you,

--Micah

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2 Posts

February 12th, 2024 09:29

more detailled steps for my workaround:

grap the shared perc driver from an esxi 7.0.3 with latest dell addon host-> login by ssh and copy the file dellshar.v00 from /bootbank folder. (i used scp for download)

place that driver-file on your new esxi 8.0.x in the same folder (/bootbank/dellshar.v00), i used ssh and scp

then edit the /bootbank/boot.cfg config file with an text editor (i used VI) and add the driver in the modules line to be loaded between following two modules:

--- s.v00 --- dellshar.v00 --- bnxtnet.v00

optional make the same two steps (driver file and config insertion) in the backupfolder /altbootbank/ too

reboot your host -> driver should then be loaded and vrtx storage should reappear.

regards

hannes

ps: i hope dell will change their mind an bring back the driver/module in a later dell-addon for esxi8 with support again.

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