RA4100 with vmware ESX 2.5.1...

[Chris Bennett_11]

I accept that this is far from a supported environment, but...

I need to build a small test/example vmware ESX environment. I'd like to use an old RA4100 storage array,
connected to two Dl360's.

Now the ESX installation is fine, until I come to add the RA4100 LUNs - the RA4100 array has been configured
upon a windows server so i know the array is setup correctly, and I am able to add either qlogic or emulex
hba's to the host servers (these being supported within ESX) but I am unable to see the LUN from within
ESX - I am able to see the hba's binding to both RA4100 controllers, but just cannot attach to the LUNs.

I know ESX doesn't support point to point or FCAL connections - but I've had these working on other
kit - just not able to get it working with the RA4100.

The RA4100 works perfectly with a Windows install - with any of the hba's installed (the only is
exception is the ACU doesn't work through the qlogic or emulex hba's, but I know this isn't going to work).

if anyone one has any ideas, please let me know... (getting to the pulling my hair out stage)

Cheers

P.S. This thread has been moved from General to Disk Array. - Hp Forum Moderator

[Uwe Zessin]

I beleive that the RA4xxx have a completely different LUN mapping than most FC arrays. The MSA1000 V1.x had something similar: a controller LUN at address 0, disk LUNs starting at 16384.

[Chris Bennett_11]

Thanks for that. I noticed the LUN numbers starting at 16384 when viewing the array from an emulex controller.

so if the disk LUNs start at 16384, does this mean I would have to increase the MAXLUN value within ESX to above 16384 for it to see the disks?

The MAXLUN value dictates the scanable range ESX can search for LUNs, the default value is 8, but this can be increased to a maximum of 255 throught he ESX MUI.

if anyone has any idea about how to increase this value above 255 please let me know.

[Andrew Hancock_2]

Chris

Did you ever get this working, as someone on the ESX forums claims, they got it working with vmotion?

I'd be interested to know, we have a few that we would like to use in the test lab, not for production.

I've noticed when using FC-AL cards, that the ESX install can "see" and format the RA4100, but on ESX start-up bind, the setup kernel and ESX kernel must be different, but I know ESX doesn't support FC-AL, but I was just going to get some KGPSAs to test with RA4100, but I'll stall on that if you never managed to get the Maxlun size sorted out?