Thanks for the article, that helped me sort out the disk order/getting all disks to show up. But, it didn't solve the issue of virtual SCSI disks being wonky in DSM. I'll start by saying that SATA virtual disks with redpill continue to work fine and reliably. Using your extension for vmw_pvscsi (or mptsas) I am able to get virtual SCSI disks to show up in DSM. Attaching a few screenshots to walk through the issue.
Here we can see all disks attached. Loader VMDK is Drive 1 (hidden when redpill SATA boot option is used instead of USB) and a test SATA virtual disk is Drive 2 on the same SATA controller as the loader. Drive 3-Drive 6 are PV SCSI disks attached to a SCSI controller. SataPortMap=24 and DiskIdxMap=0002 so all is showing correctly. If I create a storage pool and volume with SATA disk, it works. But notice how only the 1st SCSI disk is showing up as "VMware Virtual disk (HDD)" and the other just show "Virtual disk". And if I expand Drive 3 vs Drive 4 you can see Drive 3 has fake smart values for it, and as such, the SMART shim gets DSM to think it is "Healthy" but Drive 4 (and 5 & 6 too) don't get fake SMART data and don't show healthy status.
As to be expected.... if I create a storage pool and volume with Drive 3, it works.... but Drive 4-6 don't even show up as selectable since they are not marked "Healthy". Here's where it got weird too. After creating the Storage Pool and Volume with Drive 3 (the 1st SCSI disk), it magically just flipped position with Drive 4.... The below shot shows Drive 4 as having the Storage Pool along with Drive 3 (that I just created with only Drive 3 though) and Drive 3 as now being one of the generic "Virtual disk" ones without SMART data.
Very weird.... but after a minute, it flipped back.... and all was normal again, except Drive 4-6 still didn't have fake SMART data or a Healthy status allowing use in Storage Pools.
So.... building off my previous post, I am wondering if something is going on here with SCSI disks and the SMART shim from @ThorGroup. The disks clearly show up correctly once the proper driver extension is used, but it seems they show up unreliably and have issues getting fake SMART data, making them unstable, and unusable for storage pools.
That being said, I easily could be wrong and am curious what others are seeing especially those trying virtual SCSI disks. I am guessing (and I have no hardware on my end to try myself) that those using passthrough SCSI controllers are not seeing this issue, as I'm assuming SMART data passes through also, which means the redpill SMART shim isn't used to fake data.
Thank you very much for such a detailed report.
I will tell you about my results. maybe it will be useful to someone.
I am using vmware 16 hypervisor.
I can say that I also have no problems with displaying disks on sata 0 controllers (for example, if you hook up working disks immediately after the 0: 1 0: 2 bootloader, etc.) and also all disks work correctly if they are installed on the sata 1 controller : 0 1: 1, etc. at the same time, I can connect disks directly as a RAW array natively and achieve maximum performance, also through a virtual disk, creating it manually by the virtual machine itself.
BUT I could not connect any disks except on the SATA controllers (that is, NVMe and SCSI are not recognized), while I have both SATA and NVMe physical disks in the system. QUESTION. is it possible to connect an NVMe or SCSI disk via vmware so that it can be used as SSD cash in DSM? at the moment I have not found an opportunity to connect SSD cash in DSM, I am using vmware 16
if someone has a solution to this issue, tell me where to look. THANKS everyone for their help!
RedPill - the new loader for 6.2.4 - Discussion
in Developer Discussion Room
Posted
Thank you very much for such a detailed report.
I will tell you about my results. maybe it will be useful to someone.
I am using vmware 16 hypervisor.
I can say that I also have no problems with displaying disks on sata 0 controllers (for example, if you hook up working disks immediately after the 0: 1 0: 2 bootloader, etc.) and also all disks work correctly if they are installed on the sata 1 controller : 0 1: 1, etc. at the same time, I can connect disks directly as a RAW array natively and achieve maximum performance, also through a virtual disk, creating it manually by the virtual machine itself.
BUT I could not connect any disks except on the SATA controllers (that is, NVMe and SCSI are not recognized), while I have both SATA and NVMe physical disks in the system. QUESTION. is it possible to connect an NVMe or SCSI disk via vmware so that it can be used as SSD cash in DSM? at the moment I have not found an opportunity to connect SSD cash in DSM, I am using vmware 16
if someone has a solution to this issue, tell me where to look. THANKS everyone for their help!