ESX Host RAID disk failure (not) reporting

[Bruce123]

Hi,

 

We have several ESX hosts (with local storage), that are managed through vSphere, but don't report if a HDD has failed in the RAID5 array (the health logs don't indicate any hardware issues). The servers are old-ish HP servers. Does anyone know of any way we can view the status of the RAID array (without actually visiting the server and checking for LEDs)?

 

I am fairly new to VMware/ESX (my experience is with Hyper-V ).

 

Any advise / help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Kind Regards,

 

Bruce.

[Davit2005]

You may be able to do something through Alerting through Alarm definitionsthe definitions based on Storage in the Hardware Status of your host's. Are you using vCenter, what version of ESXi are you running.

[Domino]

I don't believe the older HP servers had integration with vmware reporting on a hardware level...but I could be wrong.

 

Do they not have iLO configured? you can usually run a storage report from there?

[chazzy2501]

if you want hardware reporting you have to use the hp modified versions of esx esxi.

[DMcCoy]

For ESXi all you need to do is install the relevant CIM providers if it is a supported controller card. I use it to monitor the disks on my ML115 G5/E200 RAID card setup. Do take a little care, the older custom HP installs and full managment suite used to PSOD the server after installation (however they seemed to fix it with the later ones).

 

Driver Versions in HP supplied VMware ESX/ESXi images

 

HP ESXi Offline Bundle for VMware ESXi 5.x version 1.4.5 for example (for 5.1 U1)

 

ESX full will be more of a pain depending on the version and server generation.

Edited April 30, 2013 by DMcCoy

[Bruce123]

Hi sorry for the delay, I was on annual leave yesterday.

 

The hardware is ML350 G5 (~5 years old)

Running ESX 5.0

 

Thanks.

 

Bruce.

[Bruce123]

Thanks for your advise everyone. I did a search on HP's website and found the software/updates for this server:

 

here

 

And listed at the bottom is:

 

RECOMMENDED * HP ESXi Offline Bundle for VMware ESXi 5.x (American, International)

 

Is this the software I need to allow vSphere to see the failed HDD events on the ESX hosts?

 

Is it simply a matter of physically shutting down the host server and booting into some kind of ESX admin mode and installing this software from a memory stick?

 

Thanks,

 

Bruce.

[Bruce123]

I noticed that there is also RAID controller card drivers available, would these need to be installed as well?

 

Many Thanks,

 

Bruce.