How to expand HDD storage

[Neilossrl]

Hello guys, I have ereditated a Dell PowerEdge R740 with ESXi 6.7 installed on it but the storage capacity il almost full and I need to add physically some HDDs SAS on it. is there a guide to follow to avoid making mistakes? Thank you all.

[Scott Vessey]

VMTN has an area for ESXi, a moderator will be along to move your thread there.

 

[E_Espinel]

Hello.
The first thing would be to validate the Hardware, that is the disk controller if it can support more disks and what RAID levels it supports.
Normally the Dell PowerEdge R740 server can have from bays of 8 or 16 slots.
Here are some links that may help you

https://i.dell.com/sites/csdocuments/Shared-Content_data-Sheets_Documents/en/aa/PowerEdge_R740_R740xd_Technical_Guide.pdf

https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/productdetailstxn/poweredge-r740#techspecs_section

https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000131648/list-of-poweredge-raid-controller-perc-types-for-dell-emc-systems

Through the IDRAC (server administrative module) you can validate which controller is installed.
If the ESXi host was installed with the Dell custom image you can use the PERCCLI utility to manage and monitor the controller.
check if you have the following /opt/lsi/perccli directory

Verify what adapter it is and what type in Description by using the following command on an SSH connection on the ESXi host
# esxcli storage core adapter list

 

 

[Neilossrl]

Hello,

thank you for your reply. This is the result of the command:

HBA Name  Driver     Link State  UID                                                                   Capabilities         Description
--------  ---------  ----------  --------------------------------------------------------------------  -------------------  ---------------------------------------------------------------
vmhba0    lsi_mr3    link-n/a    sas.5d09466068182e00                                                                       (0000:65:00.0) Avago (LSI) PERC H730P Mini
vmhba1    vmw_ahci   link-n/a    sata.vmhba1                                                                                (0000:00:11.5) Intel Corporation Lewisburg SATA AHCI Controller
vmhba2    vmw_ahci   link-n/a    sata.vmhba2                                                                                (0000:00:17.0) Intel Corporation Lewisburg SATA AHCI Controller
vmhba64   iscsi_vmk  online      iqn.1998-01.com.vmware:5b3632ce-3c41-b3dc-0567-801844f34c8e-27bb4d04  Second Level Lun ID  iSCSI Software Adapter
vmhba32   vmkusb     link-n/a    usb.vmhba32 

 

[E_Espinel]

Hello.
According to your last post, the disk controller is Dell PERC H730P Mini
How many internal disks does the seerver currently have, what size (2.5¨ or 3.5¨) and capacity ?
In all the free disk bay slots you can see at the bottom a backplane with connectors for disks ?
Does your server have 16 or 8 from bay disks?

All this information can be obtained from the PERCCLI utility on the ESXI host.

 

[Neilossrl]

Hello,

thank you for your reply. we currently have 8 slots all occupied by 2TB hard drives. I was considering the possibility of inserting a powervault MD1400 with HD SAS from 600gb at 10k rpm. Is there any guide I can follow to upgrade the server? Thank you.

 

[E_Espinel]

Hello.
You will require one or two SAS HBA (with RAID capabilities) on the Host to be able to connect to a Dell Series MD1400 External Storage.
This connection can be direct to the external Dell Series MD1400 with a single path (SAS cable), or better yet with two different paths (2 SAS cables).

Contact your local Dell supplier.

 

 

[Neilossrl]

Hello,

is there any guide to follow in order to install the new MD1400?

Thank you.

[IRIX201110141]

The MD1400 comes with setup instruction otherwise you can download them from https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/product-support/product/storage-md1400/docs

But since the MD1400(12x3.5") or MD1420(24x2.5") is a just a JBOD its nothing special on that end of the cable... the interesting part is the other end which mean you need also a Perc H840 HBA which is the full blown RAID Card with 2 external connectors so connect the MD to. So check for a free PCIe slot and the technical R740 documetation which PCIe Slot can equiped  with a H840.

The H840 is on the HCL and the driver is part of a Vanilla VMware ESXi or Dell Custom ISO Image. So nothing special there.

The H840 needs to be setup in the same way as your already existing H730 controller. You have to create a one or more (RAID)Diskgroups with the RAID level you want and within this Group you create one or more Virtual Disks with the size of your choice. Each VirtualDisk will shown up as a Device with a LUN on ESXi level. So you can than create your VMFS Datastores at the end.

Regards,
Joerg