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  • 1.  Ability to use smartcrtl

    Posted Mar 04, 2010 10:49 PM

    I have been into a lot of stuff regarding raid controllers, vmware and disks.

    Many people out there are building VMware servers using desktop disks, either with or without a hardware raid controller. In my case I bought a adaptec 5805 and am planning on using it with 8x1.5TB Samsung F2 Ecogreen disks.

    But using desktop disks without any form of monitoring is a bad idea. They tend to go kaput after a while. While looking into this I discovered that the 5805 (and even 3805 which I own now with special firmware) supports the use of "smartctl" to read and check and set SMART values.

    This would be beneficial for two things. A. To check for errors every now and then. B. To be able to set your CCTL / TLER values on your disks manually, making them RAID compatibly (because most disk suppliers wish to earn 2x the money, for a little different firmware).

    Now I have read that some ESX 3.5 supports smartctl. Since I am running ESXi 4.0u1 the situation is completely different. No real command prompt there to run the command....

    What are the chances of running Smartctl or "smartmontools" ( http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/smartmontools/wiki ) on a ESXi machine, or something that would provide similair functions

    Any information, thoughts, etc. is much appreciated!



  • 2.  RE: Ability to use smartcrtl

    Posted Mar 04, 2010 11:57 PM

    What about enabling SSH for the ESXi host? You can read the procedure here:

    Connect, now you've got the command prompt.

    ---

    iSCSI SAN software

    http://www.starwindsoftware.com



  • 3.  RE: Ability to use smartcrtl

    Posted Mar 05, 2010 11:13 PM

    Sadly enough this will not be enough. Research learns that the service console is very very limited in the current implementation (which is logical).

    Also, it seems Adaptec and VMware are in some kind of clinch. There is NO way to manage your array, raid, disks, or anything really. There isn't even a way to monitor them. If a disk fails or even worse happens, nothing you can do but to reboot your host. Quite an unsatisfying situation to me, but alas, I have the controllers (3805 and 5805) so will have to deal with it. :smileysad:

    My knowledge of linux/unix style systems is also a bit limited, so I was wondering if someone might be able to get it working in the service console. That would basically solve all the problems. Don't need the full agent, etc. Just the ability to read the values of the disks, tempratures and maybe set the SCT/TLER on desktop disks.

    Any help and insight appreciated!