Maintaining Areca Raid arrays

[justr24]

For first testing I migrated our system from Windows 2k3 based VMWare Server to ESX4i. As second level storage I'm using an Areca 1110 RAID controller. Driver installation wasn't a problem.

While there was an easy way to maintain and observe the Areca RAID arrays under windows via Areca's HTTPGUI and services there's none on the new esx4i installation. I'm afraid to miss the point when my RAID 5 becomes degraded (with Areca's windows services you got an email in the case something went wrong).

My question now is: How to maintain the Areca controller in an esx4i machine? (not by BIOS, don't wanna shut down to get a closer look).

Thanks, Juergen

[Gerrit_Lehr]

If this is a supported controller mentioned in the HCL you can obtain information from via CIM from the health status in the configuration tab. However, Raid monitoring is usually not part of the OS and should be done by the controller itself or via a server management card (such as Dell DRAC, HP iLO etc.).

Kind regards,

Gerrit Lehr

If you found this or other information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful".

[Dave_Mishchenko]

The ability to see the controller and drive status on the Health page will be depedent on the inclusion of an Areca CIM provider (which I don't think is the case yet). With LSI based cards there is a CIM provider which populates health data, but not for Adaptec cards as no Adaptec CIM provider has been developed for ESXi.




Dave

VMware Communities User Moderator

New book in town - vSphere Quick Start Guide -http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/08/12/new-book-in-town-vsphere-quick-start-guide/.

Do you have a system or PCI card working with VMDirectPath? Submit your specs to the Unofficial VMDirectPath HCL - http://www.vm-help.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=21.