using ESX RAID drivers in ESXi?

[Finch]

Hello everybody,

Im still very new to ESX and I'm currently evaluating ESXi 3.5. So far, it seems to be working fine

Now my question is: If a RAID controller is supposed to support ESX, does that mean I can also use it in ESXi?

Specifically, I'm talking about the 3ware 9650SE mentioned here: http://www.3ware.com/KB/article.aspx?id=14922

I have just installed ESXi and managed it from the "Infrastructure Client". (How) can I install a driver?

Thanks in advance,

Finch

[Gerrit_Lehr]

Hi,

no you can not install any drivers to the ESX server and even if there would be way, it would not be supported. You should refer to the VMWare compatibility guides and use only supported hardware. The drivers are included with the VMKernel or the service console (depending on the hardware) and are shipped ready to go. VMWare does not supprt any changes to this. But afaik esxi should support the same hardware as esx. Can anyone confirm that?!

Kind Regards,

Gerrit Lehr

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[Finch]

well... have you taken a look at the link I posted?

On the 3ware site, it says:

"9550: ... no plans ... to support ( this ) with VMware ESX server"

"9650SE: ( this ) will be supported. Software will be released on the 3ware web site summer 2008..."

So either they don't know what they're talking about or your statement is at least partially incorrect

However, they only mention "ESX server" and I don't know if that'll be any help for ESXi? Does anybody know?

(also, the "vi35_io_guide" says: "While ESX Server software itself is not derived from Linux, it includes a Linux compatibility module to allow Linux storage and networking drivers to be adapted and recompiled for ESX Server hosts" - so installing drivers seems possible at least for ESX - and I still don't know if that would include ESXi...)

[Gerrit_Lehr]

Yeah, it is a bit wired and I might of course be wrong There are a few additional driver CDs provided by VMWare under http://www.vmware.com/download/vi/drivers_tools.html but it seems to be very rare. But of course they may be working on such a thing with VMWare, or even on their own way to add support, which would however cause support problems if VMWare does not explicit support it.

It is correct that the VMKernel uses Linux modules, but still it is not supported to load any random linuxdriver into VMkernel, and I never heard of someone doing so for whatever reason. But anyhow, this is interessting and I will definetly find out some more about it. Maybe one of our wise Forum-Gurus could give some additional facts on adding drivers to the VMKernel?

The ESX3i VMKernel should be pretty similar to the ESX3 VMKernel and may therefore run the same drivers (still I dont know whether that is supported or not ), the mayor differents it the missing service console, even though the thinarchitecture of ESXi could make a significant difference in driver support.

Kind Regards,

Gerrit Lehr

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[Dave_Mishchenko]

There's a difference between how ESX and ESXi handle drivers. ESXi is basically extracting drivers from a tgz package (binmod.tgz) which is part of the "32 MB footprint" So drivers updates would be supplied from VMware as a patch. You wouldn't be able to use the packages that the download page has.