H200 configuration

Question

Hi all,

I recently bought and installed a Dell H200 raid controller to able to use hard drives larger than 2TB in my R710 server, being as i only have one hard drive for the server at the moment i want to set it up in the h200 bios settings but it won't allow me to configure it as a single drive, it wants me to add more hard drives to use in raid which i don't want to do yet. Is there a way i can configure it as a single drive on its own or not?

I've tried just letting it boot into ESXi and it does recognize the drive as being there but when i come to create VM's it won't allow it and keeps saying IO error which i assume is something to do with the hard drive.

TIA

DELL-Josh Cr · Answer

Hi, You can create a single drive raid 0. Page 47 http://downloads.dell.com/manuals/all-products/esuprt_ser_stor_net/esuprt_dell_adapters/poweredge-rc-h200_user%27s%20guide_en-us.pdf

DELL-Josh Cr · Answer

The virtual disk cannot be over 2TB if it is set to be bootable. Page 53 of the user guide. So it may not be reporting larger drives correctly. Are you using Dell drives?

Jord100 · Answer

Hi Josh,

Tried that but i still have to add a second drive to even make it happen. Out of desperation i added a second drive and configured it to raid 0 but now i only have 465GB of space on the virtual drive when it should be over 8TB, what can i do now to increase the size to what it should be?

Jord100 · Answer

It wasn't set to boot as far as i know, i did check this under the SAS topology menu and even pressed alt+b to select/deselect the virtual disk as boot but the menu never changed to say whether it was selected as boot or not. Is there another way to check?

DELL-Josh Cr · Answer

It is only going to use the space of the smallest drive, so a 250GB drive will only create a roughly 500GB raid 0. Try deleting the virtual disk and not doing any configuration in ctrl+C and see if it will see the 8TB drive.

Jord100 · Answer

The 8TB drive is a Seagate ironwolf NAS which is the one i want to use on its own, the other drive is also a Seagate but only 250GB in size

Jord100 · Answer

Ah so that explains that then, yes it does see the 8TB drive if i just let it boot into ESXi normally without pressing control+c as i have done this previously, only problem is it won't let me create any VM's on that hard drive for some reason and the LED indicator on the drive caddy doesn't display either.

DELL-Josh Cr · Answer

Ok, sounds like it isn’t the limit that is the problem then. What model drives are you using?

DELL-Josh Cr · Answer

It does show the drive is SAS topology though?

Jord100 · Answer

Yes it does

DELL-Josh Cr · Answer

What error do you get when you try to create a datastore?

Jord100 · Answer

I can create a datastore perfectly fine its when i come to create a VM on the datastore it's a problem, can't remember the exact error now but its something along the lines of 'failed to create VM, IO error' i thought it was an issue with ESXi so i reinstalled it and i still get the same error.

DELL-Josh Cr · Answer

If you just try to create it on the 250GB drive does it give the same error?

PowerEdge Hardware General

H200 configuration

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