unable to monitor RAID health RX2530 M4

[AndyDMS]

Hi all,

we have a PRIMERGY RX2530 M4 server running ESXi 6.7, the issue is that we cannot see the RAID array status or physical disk status neither from the iRMC nor from within ESXi, this is a major issue, we cannot leave the system in this state where we have no way to monitor disk failures (we will only know when an entire RAID array fails completely and we loose all the data).

The RAID controller is an "Avago (LSI) MegaRAID Tri-Mode SAS3516", I think this is a PRAID EP540i but I cannot see a way to verify this without rebooting the server just now.

Here is the detail of driver and firmware I can get from within ESXi:

Code: Select all

Name:   MR-DriverVersion
Type:   string
value:  7.708.07.00
Name:   MR-HBAModel
Type:   string
value:  MegaRAID 1000:14:1734:1236
Name:   MR-FWVersion
Type:   string
value:  Fw Rev. 50.7.2-2553
Name:   MR-ChipRevision
Type:   string
value:  Chip Rev. B0
Name:   MR-CtrlStatus
Type:   string
value:  FwState c0000000


We have this CIM provider package installed also:

Code: Select all

lsiprovider                    500.04.V0.73-0002                     LSI      VMwareAccepted    2019-06-01

From within the iRMC in Mass Storage I can see two RAID controllers, one is the little microSD RAID1 for the OS, the other I assume is the PRAID but it shows as "Unknown" with no further info shown. I think that previously we could see the RAID health from the iRMC but we have since upgraded all the server firmware, although now I'm doubting my own memory of this. From with in the VMware graphical interfaces (loging into HTML5 GUI of server or via vCenter) in the hardware monitoring section under storage nothing is displayed.

Server BIOS is: V5.0.0.12 R1.29.0 for D3383-A1x
iRMC firmware is: 1.25P
ESXi version: 6.7.0 Update 2 (Build 13981272)

With other vendors servers (IBM for example) using similar RAID controllers (ie rebadged megaraid/LSI) we have always been able to monitor the RAID from ESXi by installing the correct driver and the LSI CIM provider but so far with this system we cannot do the same. Can anyone spot any issues or provide us with the info on how to solve this issue?

many thanks in advance, Andy.

[me@work]

While your controller's firmware is at recent level, the versions of your driver and CIM provider do not match FTS's ESXi 6.7u2 Custom Image. Don't know where you got them from, and whether they will work with FTS's controller firmware, as they appear to be younger than FTS's image.

But your machine's BIOS/UEFI and especially the iRMC firmware is outdated for ages...

You might want to get these updated to 1.35/2.46 first, and try again.

Ever tried ServerView RAID?
(Damn, I'd need to try that myself once again with latest FW and CIM provider versions before giving that advice...)

[AndyDMS]

Hi,

thanks for the reply. All the BIOS/firmware was updated to the latest supported versions as of about 4 months ago (based on support matrix Excel doc provided by Fujitsu). If I recall correctly this did mean not using the latest server BIOS that was supported on other OSes.
I just checked the documentation re the Fujitsu image 6.7 u2 regarding versions and our server is running newer driver and CIM provider versions, Fujitsu image versions are 7.707.11.00-1 and 500.04.V0.71-0004 respectively. The driver image was installed from minor patch updates of ESXi as its a native driver and the CIM provider was downloaded manually from LSI/Broadcom support.

I´ve updated the RMC firmware now but unfortunately I still see no info for the drives or RAID controller there (firmware 2.46P).

Although I still have no solution for monitoring the drives via ESXi CIM and I would still like to do this, I have found an alternative. Using a combination of MegaRAID storcli, ssh keys and a script on a Linux host I am able to check the RAID health. So I probably won't spend any or much more time trying to solve this as my alternate solution works fine,

thanks again, Andy.

[AndyDMS]

PS we did try installing ServerView ESXi when the system was first installed, the software installed fine in vCenter but if wouldn't work, I don't remember the exact details now but basically on the page where we should have seen some info of the server nothing was displayed. I spent a few hours on it and gave up as following the exact steps of the install guide didn't seem to work and couldn't see much I could do troublehshooting.