Running datastores on RAID device provided by Z77 chipset

[Simon_H]

This is a bit of a long shot but... has anyone with a motherboard using the Intel Z77 chipset managed to use the onboard SATA RAID funtionality for a data store in ESXi?

My whitebox server is an ASRock Z77 Extreme mobo / i7 3770 with an SSD and a couple of 3TB HDD which I'd optimistically hoped to use for a RAID1 mirror. Looking at the ASRock downloads available (http://www.asrock.com/MB/download.asp?Model=Z77%20Extreme4&o=All) there's a Windows download called "SATA RAID Driver (For system to read from floppy diskette during Windows installation)". Clearly ESXi needs some kind of driver to talk to the onboard RAID (will this be generic Intel or specific to ASRock?) but I haven't been able to find anything, e.g. in the Rollup 2 or Drivers download pages.

I know I'm kind of on my own at the moment in that this combo is very new and not on the HCL etc... just wondering if anyone else has tried this?

Simon

[Simon_H]

I found this post (http://communities.vmware.com/message/1855655) about the Z68 chipset which looks like a very similar question. Dave M's comment was:

The motherboard likely has an  Intel ICH*R controller which is software based RAID.   ESXi does not  support software RAID so which you'll be able to use the host, ESXi will  only recognize the individual disks.

While  the configuration of the RAID arrays is handled in the BIOS of the  host, a software driver is still required for these types of RAID  controllers to work properly.

Perhaps the Z77 is pretty much the same. If I'd be burning CPU cycles to do the RAID anyway (I was assuming it was being handled in the Z77 hardware) then I might as well do that in NexentaStor and get all the ZFS goodness too. Time for a rethink.

[Glwizard]

Hi simon:

My native language is Spanish, so my English is not good, please understand me.

I have the same issue, i have a Gigabyte ga-z77-d3h, i have 4 hdd Western Digital 500gb, so is very important to me have a redundance in the data.

I tray to implement RAID 10 or RAID 1 but is not working, the ESXI detects the four individuals disks..

Did you find a Solution???

Thanks and sorry the mistakes.

[Simon_H]

Hi

No, I think the situation is still the same. This Intel RAID is really co-operation between the motherboard and the OS to provide RAID (unlike a RAID controller where the OS doesn't know there's RAID underneath) so the OS needs to support it. In the case of ESXi 5 it didn't and I'd be surprised if 5.1 was any different but would be happy to be corrected

I think your options are:

• to do software RAID within the guests,
• use some sort of virtual appliance like NexentaStor to present iSCSI or NFS shares which it RAID protects - though you still need something to protect the VMFS running the appliance,
• buy a RAID card and plug your disks into that. (I know it seems a shame given the supposed motherboard RAID support!)

Actually the last of those might be easiest approach and not that expensive (50-100 EUR?) - the main thing to do would be to search for people using your make/model of RAID card with ESXi before you buy it (ESXi probably won't have the drivers for the very cheap ones).

Good luck!

Simon

[domare]

I am running your same MB and has same issue in regards to the ESXi hypervisor & the onboard RAID.  -Its Software RAID.   ESX only reads hardware RAID im told..

So... i tried a PERC5i because people said it was good for money.  I failed to check the specs on a piece of older hardware.... and vSphere shows me only 2TB of my 3TB disks.

~So I am in the market for a SATAIII (6GPS) RAID Controller that is supported by VMWare for my Z77 Extreme.   -this has not been so easy

*We have another Z77 running FreeNAS w/ 4x3TB disks in RAIDZ + ZFS  - disks were in JBOD mode.. so problem did not present itself.   -This makes a great iSCSI datastore for ESXi