DL370G6 P212 MSL2024, ESXi RHEL5.5 and DP 6.11

[Robert Campbell_6]

Hello,

we have a virtualised cell-manager here running on ESXi, with RHEL 5.5 64Bit as the OS. The Cell is running DP6.11 and everything is on ESXi.

I have tried PCI-passthrough mode on the storage adapter, but ESXi 'hangs' at the 'starting udev' stage in RHEL5.5 Now I have tried passing the tape drive and library through the virtual SAS and virtual SCSI controllers. No luck so far.

Anyone have something similar or any ideas?

Thanks in advance,

Robert Campbell (Netherlands).

[Johan Guldmyr]

Hi!

Is the MSL2024 SCSI?

From the EBS matrix page 30.

http://h18006.www1.hp.com/products/storageworks/ebs/matrix_archives.html

On VMWare Guest OS

Direct Attached SCSI: YES:

Direct attached SCSI tape dirve is multi target only (no multi LUN) and must only be attached to a single VM at a time.

Does the MSL have a SCSI ID per tape drive and the media changer, or one SCSI ID with different LUNs? You should be able to figure this out from the web interface of the MSL. I do not remember but I think it is the multi-LUN?

[Robert Campbell_6]

Johan,

thanks for the reply.

It is attached via SAS (which is direct attached SCSI, strictly speaking) but the MSL2024 requires Multi-LUN support and the library shows up under native Linux as LUNs and sg (scsi generic) devices. So I guess that's a no-no then for ESXi/ESX. Pity. We could have run other things on the machine during the day, while the back-up runs at night. I guess we could virtualise within RHEL? Never even thought of that one! Thanks!

We even tried running a dedicated controller P212 via PCI passthrough under ESXi. During the initialisation of udev under RHEL 5.5, we get a beautiful 'hang' from ESXi. :(

Thanks for the reply. Mighty useful document!

Robert

[Johan Guldmyr]

Yeah it is a pitty, would be great for smaller shops. Missing from VMWare's side for a change.

Hope the RHEL setup works instead :)