E200 SmartArray in 380 G5 and ESX 4.1 vmfs datastore

[Uros678]

Hello,

anyone have any experience using this raid controler with ESX?

I have a test setup with the above hardware and my datastore is on a raid 5 logical drive. Now, when I simulate a drive failure (unplug one drive while the ESX is running) the vmfs datastore is gone. The ESX doesn't see the vmfs datastore anymore. It's just gone. Now this is something that shouldn't happen.

After reinserting the drive, the rebuild is not started until I restart the server. The ESX console partition which is on a raid 1 logical drive survives the loss of a drive normaly and after reinsertion it starts to rebuild normaly.

Anyone had any experience with this?

Best regards,

Uros

[Jan Soska]

Hello,
I tried ESX 4u2 on bl465g5 with e200i smartarray - but only raid1 between 2 disks. I did not noticed any problem with it.
Behavior you describe is really strange - logical drive restore should be independent on any OS installed - it is hardware provided. Try to do this without booting to ESX. Check firmware level - maybe there is an issue?

Jan

[Uros678]

All firmware levels are up to date. I used 9.1(C) firmware update DVD.

The problem is only with raid 5 with a datastore on it. The ESX datatore that resides on raid 1 is working ok. RAID 1 fails and rebuilds as expected, without disrupting the ESX.

Best regards,

Uros

[Jan Soska]

hmm, could you try this rebuilding without running OS?

Jan