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ESXi 5 not recognizing PERC 6i

L

lucky_luke

n00b
Joined
Jan 25, 2012
Messages
2
Hey all, just built an an ESXi server for a home lab. Specs below:

Mobo: SuperMicro X9SCL+
Proc: Intel Xeon E3-1230
RAID Controller: Dell PERC 6i w/ BBU
HDDs (on PERC 6i): 2x 300GB Fujitsu 15k SAS in RAID 1
HDDs (on mobo's SATA controller): 4x 1TB Seagate 7.2k SATA (no raid)
RAM: 4x4GB Kingston DDR3 1333 ECC
USB thumb drive for ESXi installation

My plan was to install ESXi 5 on a USB drive connected to the mobo's internal USB port. Installation went fine, except that my fully initialized PERC 6i RAID 1 volume did not appear in the list of locations to install to. This was odd but I didn't think much of it since I was installing ESXi onto the USB drive. Logged into the new ESXi installation to find that my PERC 6i controller does not show up in the "storage" section of the vSphere Client. My mobo's controller is visible, along with the 4 SATA drives connected to it. The only place I could find any reference to the fact that the PERC 6i was installed was on the "passthrough" page. The PERC is listed as one of the devices available for passthrough.

The PERC 6i itself, as far as I can see, is operating normally. Firmware is updated to the most recent version from Dell and I can access the card's BIOS just fine. The card POSTS fine with no error messages. Also, I have a small fan attached to the PERC's heatsink to provide better cooling.

Troubleshooting so far:
  1. Moved the PERC to a different PCIe slot. No effect.
  2. Unplugged the drives from the PERC. No effect.
  3. Booted a Fedora 16 livecd on the bare hardware. PERC volume is recognized and accessible.
  4. Installed Windows 7 on the bare hardware. PERC volume is recognized and accessible.
  5. Installed ESXi 4.1 U1 to the USB drive. ESXi 4.1 recognizes the PERC and the RAID 1 volume fine. It's visible under "storage" as well as the "health" section of the vSphere Client. From what I can see, the PERC is operating exactly as it should under ESXi 4.1.

Is there something I'm missing? All of my troubleshooting so far points to a driver issue on ESXi 5, but everything I've read says that ESXi 5 supports the PERC 6i out of the box. Let me know if you need any additional info.

As a brief aside, is there much benefit in running ESXi 5 instead of 4 in a home lab situation? I'm not really using any advanced features, just need a platform to virtualize a few servers.

Thanks for your time. -Luke
 
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Thanks a bunch for that link geiger. I moved the PERC to the bottom PCIe slot and it's now recognized in ESXi 5. I feel stupid for 2 reasons: 1) I was not able to find that thread even though I searched for hours for similar problems; 2) During my initial troubleshooting, I never actually moved the PERC to the bottom PCIe slot, I only tried the one's above it.

Is this a SuperMicro bios issue? The fact that it works fine in any slot in ESXi 4.1 but not in ESXi 5 indicates to me that VMware may also have something to do with it.
 
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