Lets quickly press F to import the foreign configuration (to the controller) from the disks:Īll of the disks from your previous configuration are gone Looks like firmware is latest version too, version 21.3.5-0002. Remember, the plan is to get the H710 installed and running under ESXi 6.7 first and then upgrade to ESXi 7.0 later, once the H710 has settled in. Plug in the SAS cables and it’s job done. I didn’t bother taking the time to find out, I simply plugged my H710 controller into PCI slot 2 as can be seen from the picture above. Simple enough, power off the server, unplug and remove the H700 array controller and plug in the H710 array controller.Īs the H710 array controller isn’t “an official option” for the PowerEdge R710 server, chances are that it won’t work in the R710’s dedicated storage adapter slot. Finding out the hard way that such an upgrade is indeed not possible was at the forefront of my day spent preparing for the upgrade. Yep, I spent the best part of a day backing up all of my data. Will an LSI 2208 controller read, accept and run with an array created by an LSI 2108 controller? Let’s find out! Backup, Backup, Backup Let’s talk about the worrying part of all of this: is it possible to upgrade from a H700 to a H710 WITHOUT DATA LOSS? Having said that, I think I’ll stick with the “in box” lsi-mr3 ESXi 7.0 native driver. VMware ESXi 6.5 GA support for the Dell Shared Perc H710 Adapter 6Gbps Family of SAS controllersĭriver name and version:dell-shared-perc8-06.806.90.00-1OEM.650.673īugs fixed (compared to earlier release of driver): Fixes a potential issue where in a clustered configuration snapshot, VMotion, and cloning operations could fail when writing to shared storage.Īdditional configuration options supported by the driver: None Strangely the release notes for the driver talk about ESXi 6.5 support: Yep they sure do:Ĭhecking the VMware Compatibility Guide for the H710 adapter, surprise upon surprise there is a separate ESXi 7.0 driver available!!! Check it out here. Bargain! But Wait There’s More Bonus 1 - CablingĪs mentioned in a comment by Mike Vasquez (cheers Mike!) in an R710 server, the H700 cables work just fine with the H710. Luckily enough, I was able to pick up my H710P adapter on ebay from a UK seller for £50 including postage. Where as the H710P adapter has a standard PCIe connector: The H710 mini is designed to fit into a later 12th generation (PowerEdge Rx20) servers as can be seen from it’s proprietary connector: Fujitsu Server MegaRAID SAS 9286CV-8e SAS - pdfĪ more complete list of LSI SAS2208 based controllers is available on the Serve The Home Forums.IBM / Lenovo ServeRAID M5110 and M5110e - pdf.Here’s just a small selection of some of the more popular cards: Again, LSI being LSI, the SAS2208 chipset is used in many, many other array controllers. Looking through the Dell spec sheet, the H710 is based on the LSI SAS2208 chipset. The plan being to get the H710 installed and running under ESXi 6.7 first and then upgrade to ESXi 7.0 later, once the H710 has settled in. Yep, so I bit the bullet and invested in a H710 RAID adapter. Sure, it’s the way it goes, older hardware whilst still fully functional ends up obsolete purely due to lack of software support. At time of writing this post, it has been just over four and a half months since my original missing PERC post and unfortunately - although not really unexpectedly - there has been no release of an ESXi 7.0 compatible native driver for the H700 or LSI 2108 based array controllers in general.Īlong with the brilliant feedback from the community (you guys rule ) even with the driver shenanigans, my initial hopes and dreams of LSI 2108 support in ESXi 7.0 where not to come to pass.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |