ESXi 6.7 DSM 6.2.3 and SAS pass-through

[Vinx]

Hello, 

 

I have a Z400 workstation Xeon W3680, 24GB RAM, with a P410 SAS Controller and 4x3TB SAS disks.

ESXi 6.7u3 is installed on it, and I have DSM 6.2.3-25426 (DS3615xs), everything works fine, except for drives

 

In my previous installation (HP NL40, 12GB RAM, 4x1TB SATA, ESXi 6.0) I used RDM to mount them, works fine (but no SMART)

With my new configuration I thought i could use the RAID capability of the SAS Controller (+ SMART), so instead of using RDM, I build a raid 5 volume from P410 manager, and activate the pass-through for PCI HP P410.

But in DSM, I was unable to see my volume, so I have deleted the RAID5 volume (made from P410 manager) to be able to see disks in DSM, but the disk list is still empty.

(with pass through off, i was able to see disks and volume with ssacli)

 

What is the good solution ?

1- No volume created with P410 manager

2- Pass through activated on PCI HP 410 Ctrl

3- Add the PCI device to the Xpen VM 

4- works ?

 

or 

 

1- RAID 5 volume created with P410 manager

2- NO Pass through on PCI HP 410 Ctrl

3- Add the RAID5 volume as a raw disk to the VM

4- works ?

 

or 

 

1- No volume created with P410 manager

2- NO Pass through on PCI HP 410 Ctrl

3- Add each disc as RDM device

4- works ?

 

Thanks

Edited May 26, 2020 by Vinx
dsm model name added

[flyride]

RDM is probably your best choice, connect the RDM disks to second virtual SATA controller for 6.2.x

 

SMART does not work because the code is custom compiled into Synology's utilities and you can't override the SMART query strings like on a normal system.

 

You can get rid of the incessant SMART errors in /var/log/messages by following instructions here: 

 

Edited May 26, 2020 by flyride

[Vinx]

I try this : 

 

 

1- RAID 5 volume created with P410 manager

2- NO Pass through on PCI HP 410 Ctrl

3- Add the RAID5 volume as a big raw disk to the VM (1x 9TB)

4- it's working

 

 

1- No volume created with P410 manager (in fact, each disk as a raid 0)

2- NO Pass through on PCI HP 410 Ctrl

3- Add each disc as RDM device (4x 3TB)

4- it's working

 

 

1- 1 big volume (9TB) created with P410 manager

2- Pass through activated on PCI HP 410 Ctrl

3- Add the PCI device to the Xpen VM 

4- not working

 

1- No volume created with P410 manager (in fact, each disk as a raid 0)

2- Pass through activated on PCI HP 410 Ctrl

3- Add the PCI device to the Xpen VM 

4- not working

 

So it seems like pass through does not work with P410, if I activate it, I can't see disk in DSM

 

So another question : use raid 5 from P410 controler, or use syno raid from DSM ? (I have a P410 spare and I don't need reconstruction performance)

[flyride]

Always use DSM RAID, btrfs self-healing features and advanced disk management are the whole point of the system.

[Vinx]

Thanks @flyride 👍

 

Last question, both work but need advice :

 

After VM creation, do you : 

- add a 2nd virtual disk to install the DSM OS, then you poweroff, add raw disks, power on and create your volume in DSM ?

or

- does not add a 2nd virtual disk, add raw disks immediately, power on and install the DSM OS ? I suppose that DSM OS will be installed on a reserved partition 

[flyride]

No, DSM is installed to all available block storage devices for redundancy (which is another reason not to present a monolithic device to your VM). 

 

All you need is the boot loader on the first Virtual SATA controller as device 0:0

Connect your RDM drives in sequence to the second Virtual SATA controller as device 1:0, 1:1, 1:2, etc

2nd virtual disk isn't required if you have RDM devices online

 

Every disk has three partitions, Linux, swap and data. When you run the DSM install it will RAID 1 DSM (Linux and swap) to the first two partitions, respectively. Once DSM is fully installed you can use the data space for whatever array configuration and volume layout you wish.