VMWARE ESX and P212

[supportwelldon]

I have install 2 disk in Raid 1 in my HP server, but when I install ESX server it see's them as two separate disks?

The card is on the recommend list.

has anyone had a similiar issue?

[TTr]

The OS does not see the physical disks that are attached to the P212. What have you created on the P212 as far as logical drives (LUNs)? It may be those that ESX sees.

[supportwelldon]

Its definetly seeing two separate drives.

[TTr]

I don't doubt that. What I am saying is it is impossible for the OS to see the physical drives that are attached to a raid controller. The OS (ESX in this case) sees logical drives that the P212 presents out to the OS. If you or somebody else did not create any logical volumes (LUNs) on the P212, they may have been created automatically the first time the P212 was powered on in your server.

How many and what size physical disks you have on the P212 and how many and what size volumes do you see in ESX?

[supportwelldon]

There are two 160 gig drives, in raid 1.

[supportwelldon]

VMWARE see's them as two separte 160gb rather than 1 x 160

[TTr]

VMware does not see the two physical disks. There is probably two 160GB raid0 LUNs on the P212.

Do you have the ACU installed in ESX? If not try installing it. That will show you what is configured in the P212.

[supportwelldon]

How can I install ACU in ESX?

[TTr]

Officially HP does not support ACU on ESX but many people have tried the Linux version of ACU and has worked.
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/servers/proliantstorage/software-management/acumatrix/sw-drivers.html

Alternatively if you can reboot the server you can get into the ORCA (raid controller BIOS) and check the P212 configuration.

[Jimmy Vance]

When the server boots during POST, what does the p212 display, 2 logical drives? As TTr stated, it sounds like someone has created two seperate RAID 1+0 logical drives. You don't need ACU, during POST when the p212 identifies itself press F8 and look at how the drives are configured.

You will probably need to delete the 2 current logical drives then create one RAID 1+0 logical drive that contains both drives

Of course you'll lose any data on the drvies when you do this. but if this is a new install once the drives are configured properly it only takes a few minutes to re-install ESX