[ESXi - OI - All In One] What is the best way to have redundant ESXi - OI

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pitne

Weaksauce
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Aug 3, 2010
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Right now I have a ESXi, OI, Napp-it, All In One setup. I have a single esxi,oi,non-passthrough hard drive connected to an intel on board sata controller. I cant raid 1 on this controller because esxi does not recognize it.

Is there some way I can get redundancy on this. It doesn't have to be high availability. I just don't want to have to reconfigure everything if the hard drive dies. I cant think of any options that will work good but I was wondering if the community recognizes this problem and has any good options
 
I wouldn't bother. Assuming you don't change the OI install much (if at all), do this:

with no VMs running, use the vsphere management app to export an OVA of the OI VM to somewhere safe, then boot and run as usual. If the local hard drive dies, you can shutdown the esxi box, replace it, create a datastore, deploy the saved OVA, start up everything, and you are good to go...
 
danswartz said:
I wouldn't bother. Assuming you don't change the OI install much (if at all), do this:

with no VMs running, use the vsphere management app to export an OVA of the OI VM to somewhere safe, then boot and run as usual. If the local hard drive dies, you can shutdown the esxi box, replace it, create a datastore, deploy the saved OVA, start up everything, and you are good to go...
Click to expand...

that sounds like it will work good. saves on needing a second drive active
 
that was my logic. i don't mind taking a 1/2 hour to get the box back up in the unlikely chance of the local datastore dying...
 
I've been wondering if it's possible to do the following. Take two drives and setup identical virtual disks on each of them. These virtual disks would then be attached to a VM (Windows, Linux etc.) They would then be partitioned and setup in a software RAID 1 configuration in the guest OS. I haven't researched this to see if it's practical, but I thought I'd share anyway
 
Ehren8879 said:
I've been wondering if it's possible to do the following. Take two drives and setup identical virtual disks on each of them. These virtual disks would then be attached to a VM (Windows, Linux etc.) They would then be partitioned and setup in a software RAID 1 configuration in the guest OS. I haven't researched this to see if it's practical, but I thought I'd share anyway
Click to expand...

Yep. Works fine. Have done that.
 
I tried to export (File -> Export -> Export OVF Template) my open indiana VM on my non-passthrough disk and I got this error:

W1asH.png


I dont really want to remove those from the VM for fear that it might mess up the zfs configuration. Those PCI devices are my 3 lsi 9211-8i's
 
oh yeah, sorry, i had that happen too. no worries, remove the pass through device(s), export it, then re-add them. it should work fine.
 
Ehren8879 said:
I've been wondering if it's possible to do the following. Take two drives and setup identical virtual disks on each of them. These virtual disks would then be attached to a VM (Windows, Linux etc.) They would then be partitioned and setup in a software RAID 1 configuration in the guest OS. I haven't researched this to see if it's practical, but I thought I'd share anyway
Click to expand...
Interesting, let me see if I am getting this right. You give the OI VM two identical virtual disks, each from a different local hard drive, then use a software mirror in the guest os for the root pool?
 
shiznit said:
Interesting, let me see if I am getting this right. You give the OI VM two identical virtual disks, each from a different local hard drive, then use a software mirror in the guest os for the root pool?
Click to expand...

works just fine.
 
Last edited:
shiznit said:
Interesting, let me see if I am getting this right. You give the OI VM two identical virtual disks, each from a different local hard drive, then use a software mirror in the guest os for the root pool?
Click to expand...

Is one supposed to set up the software raid 1 during the installation of OI? or something else?
 
cool, I wonder if the OI Install GUI gives the ability to create a software raid during install... or if have to do it using CLI
 
ohh I see. I'm not familiar with rpool. Is the rpool the container for the entire OS?
 
The name isn't really important in general. OpenIndiana calls the system pool 'rpool', Nexenta calls it 'syspool'. It's whatever the root filesystems and boot blocks and such live on.
 
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