Adding Hard Drives to create a RAID

[orenyny]

Hi,

I have ESXi installed and running with a few VMs.

The machine currently has only one hard drive but I want to add at least one to mirror the first, in case of a failure.

The server is an Intel board with onboard SATA controller, currently set to IDE.

If I change the settings of the SATA to RAID or AHCI it cannot find an HDD to boot from.

Is there a way for me to add another 1 or 2 HDDs in order to create a RAID?

Can I do that without reinstalling?

If I have to reinstall, how should it be done?

Thanks!

[khughes]

It sounds like you're using a laptop or PC to run ESXi and not hardware on the HCL, am I correct? If that's the case and you have to have them set to IDE to see the drives period, when you change it to that onboard RAID (soft RAID) ESXi probably wont see the drives period. Unless you have a known non-hcl raid controller or support HCL RAID card I don't think you should move forward with this on your current setup.

• Kyle

[orenyny]

Kyle thanks for your quick reply.

No this is NOT a lapop nor a desktop PC .

It has an Intel server motherboard (S3210SH) and a quad core CPU.

It also has 8GB of RAM if this matters.

The hard drive is a Seagate ST3500320NS.

I am not sure I understood your remark. Are you saying that I have to have it in IDE mode for ESXi to be able to work with it?

Will this allow any kind of RAID or mirroring?

Thanks again.

[khughes]

Well that's a good thing that I mis-understood the original post. Are your VM's stored on local storage or on shared storage somewhere else? I'm afraid that if you add the hard drive in and change the settings that its going to mess with ESXi and the installation, even though you just want to mirror the drive. If you have them on shared storage and you have documentation on how to rebuild your ESXi host quickly, I would say kind of go for it and see if it works or not. If its local storage you have to be a lot more careful because you don't want to delete all your VM's. If they're stored locally then I would make sure you have a good backup and good documentation on how to restore / configure the ESXi host.

My gut feeling is that if you switch it to a RAID setup its going to format the drive for the new RAID.

• Kyle

[orenyny]

Hi,

Is there anybody with some experience with this matter?

Is it possible to add hard drives or do I need to reinstall in order to do that?

If the verdict that I need to reinstall, would you recommend using VMWare server instead of ESXi.

Will it not be a more flexible platform to add hardrives and for remote management?

Thank you.

[RParker]

Well what Kyle says is true.

If it can't find the hard drive, that means you need drivers to support that new configuration. Switching from Stand Alone drives to ACHI / RAID is a completely different driver. Depending on the OS, you can't simply switch it you have to reinstall.

Not to mention when you switch RAID you can't use the existing disk, it's now foreign, and you may lose the data, so you have format it for RAID (it depends on the controller)

My laptop has the same problem. I can't switch the driver, no matter what it won't reboot. But if I reinstall Windows it works fine.