UnRAID on VMWare ESXi with Raw Device Mapping


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Hi,

 

I managed to get UnRAID running in a virtual machine on my VMWare ESXi server with fairly minimal tinkering, so I thought I'd document the process incase anyone else might find this useful.  It uses both Raw Device Mapping and USB Pass Through, so it should be reasonably performant and easy to migrate to/from a physical/virtualised platform... and your USB license key will work too!  I haven't done any real testing yet, but on an array format, I was getting ~60MB/sec, which seems reasonable for the three SATA disks I was testing with.

 

Comments/improvements welcome - particularly around the faff of creating a virtual boot disk image, which seems like overkill?

 

NOTE:  I haven't done any proper testing on this, so please don't be silly and use it with production data!

 

Cheers,

Bryan

 


Install ESXi 4.1 on your physical server and enable Remote Tech Support (SSH)

 

To enable SSH, boot your ESXi node and at the status screen:

  • <F2> Customise System
  • Troubleshooting Options
  • Enable Remote Tech Support (SSH)
  • <ESC> Exit
  • <ESC> Log out

 


SSH into your ESXi Host and create Raw Device Pass-thru devices

 

  • Download Putty
  • SSH to your ESXi Host
  • Username: root
  • Password: <blank by default>

 

# Identify your disks
fdisk -l | grep '^Disk'
...
Disk /dev/disks/t10.ATA_____ST3160812AS_________________________________________5LS3P8SB
Disk /dev/disks/t10.ATA_____WDC_WD1600JS2D75NCB3__________________________WD2DWCANM7450414
Disk /dev/disks/t10.ATA_____WDC_WD1600JS2D75NCB3__________________________WD2DWCANM7453963
...

mkdir /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/UnRAID
cd /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/UnRAID
vmkfstools -a lsilogic -z /vmfs/devices/disks/t10.ATA_____ST3160812AS_________________________________________5LS3P8SB   mydisk1.vmdk
vmkfstools -a lsilogic -z /vmfs/devices/disks/t10.ATA_____WDC_WD1600JS2D75NCB3__________________________WD2DWCANM7450414   mydisk2.vmdk
vmkfstools -a lsilogic -z /vmfs/devices/disks/t10.ATA_____WDC_WD1600JS2D75NCB3__________________________WD2DWCANM7453963   mydisk3.vmdk
# NOTE: you we're using /vmfs/devices/disks here ... not /dev as above!

 


Install UnRAID onto a USB Stick, but with a different volume name

 

Step 1 Plug the Flash into your PC and re-format it using Windows (Right-Click the Flash under Computer and select Format):

  • For File system, leave it as Default
  • For Volume label, enter "ROOT" (or anything else, other than UNRAID!)
  • Check the Quick Format box and click Start

 

Step 2 Download the syslinux tool from the Lime Tech download page, and extract syslinux.exe to a simple directory, for example, c:\.

 

Step 3 Click on Start / Programs / Accessories. Right-Click on Command Line Prompt and choose Run As Administrator. In the dialog box, type "c:\syslinux.exe -ma f:"

 

...and then press the Enter key. If necessary, change the directory from c:\ to whatever directory you downloaded syslinux to, and change the f: to use whatever drive letter that Windows mounted your Flash on (you can double check the drive letter by looking under Computer).

 

While it will appear to do nothing, the syslinux tool will create a hidden system file named ldlinux.sys on the Flash and make the drive bootable. The latest version and a complete distribution of syslinux is available here.

 

Step 4 Download the latest unRAID Server, and extract the files from the zip archive to your Flash.

 

Step 5 Open Computer, Right-Click on the Flash drive and choose Eject.

 


Create a virtual boot disk image from the UnRAID USB Stick

 

  • Download/Install WinImage (free trial available)
  • Create virtual hard disk from physical drive
  • File name: unraid.vmdk
  • Save as type: VMWare VMDK (*.vmdk)
  • Select the partition to connect to:  <cancel>

 


Put the USB Stick back to normal, for use later for config/license storage

 

  • Rename USB Stick to "UNRAID" (exactly 6 characters, all upper case)
    (Right-click the Flash under Computer and select rename)
  • Eject the USB Stick (Open Computer, Right-Click on the Flash drive and choose Eject)
  • Put the USB Stick into your ESXi Host

 


Upload the boot hard disk image to ESXi's datastore

 

Point your vSphere Client at your ESXi Host and then:

  • Select the physical host
  • Go to the summary Page
  • Right click your datastore (datastore1) and select Browse Datastore...
  • Upload the two files created when we made the image of the USB Stick
  • * unraid-flat.vmdk
  • * unraid.vmdk

 


Create your Virtual Machine

 

Point your vSphere Client at your ESXi Host and follow the New Virtual Machine Wizard:

  • custom
  • virtual machine version: 7
  • guest os: Linux / other 2.6x Linux (32-bit)
  • Number of virtual processors: 1
  • Memory Size: 1GB
  • How many NICS do you want to connect: 1
  • NIC1: VM Network / Adapter: E1000 / Connect at Power on: Yes
  • SCSI Controller: LSI Logic SAS

 

  • Use an existing virtual disk
  • Browse... Datastore1 -> UnRAID -> unraid.vmdk (the usb image we made)
  • Virtual Device Node: IDE (0:0)
  • Mode: Independant / Persistant

 

  • Edit the virtual machine before completion: yes

 

  • Add... USB Controller
  • Add... USB Device
  • Support vMotion while device is connected: no

 

  • For each of your physical disks:
  • Add... Hard Disk
  • Select the type of disk to use: Use an existing virtual disk
  • Browse... datastore1 -> UnRAID -> diskname
  • Virtual Device Node: scsi(1:0)
  • Mode: Independent / Persistent
    (it should now appear as a Mapped Raw LUN in VM hardware list)

 

  • Re-configure the SCSI controller that was added for you
  • Change Type... LSI Logic SAS
  • SCSI Bus Sharing: none

 

  • Finish

 


Finished!

 

You should now be able to power on the VM and UnRAID will boot as normal.  From here, follow the usual instructions on how to set up networking and administer UnRAID via the WebUI.  /boot will be mounted from your USB stick, so your array config and any changes to the 'go' script will need to be made to the USB stick as normal.

 

Good luck!

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I had planned to test and verify parity from an already existing unRAID array this weekend, but had issues upgrading my CPU to a 64-bit compatible one (ESXi requires this).  I will try it again next weekend and report back.

 

On a side note, you do not have to create the vmdk image file to boot from, which is probably very confusing and time consuming to many people.  You can use your already working unRAID thumb drive, but you have to tell ESXi how to boot from it by using a CD Boot Image that can boot to USB.  I used a suggestion from another thread and created a CD Boot image in a few minutes with PLOP (http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanagerdl.html).  With this method, you just mount the ISO image as the VM CD-ROM drive and it boots off of your USB drive instantly.

 

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Would you mind plopping down the hardware you're using for you builds?  I'm very interested in pursuing a new build similar to this in the future once this receives a bit more testing.  I got rid of my Windows 08 server but have been missing it dearly... came down to money and energy usage.  I've always dreamed of having my unRaid server be multi-purpose but normal vmware just wouldn't work for my needs (power limitations).

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Would you mind plopping down the hardware you're using for you builds?  I'm very interested in pursuing a new build similar to this in the future once this receives a bit more testing.  I got rid of my Windows 08 server but have been missing it dearly... came down to money and energy usage.  I've always dreamed of having my unRaid server be multi-purpose but normal vmware just wouldn't work for my needs (power limitations).

 

I have 2 unRAID systems at home - The main production system has a Q9400 (quad core) processor and 6GB of memory.  I currently run VMware Server 2.0.2 (software) and 2 Windows XP VM's on the system without any issues.  The main limitation I ran into for speed with this system was the slow hard drive I was using to store the VM's.  I've recently switched to an SSD and it is absolutely flying now.  To be honest, I could do everything with a dual core CPU, the quad is overkill and not needed.

 

My 2nd system is my backup system of production and also used for testing (both new software and hardware).  It is a Pentium D (dual core - very old) with just 1 GB of memory.  The plan is to put ESXi on it and map the existing SATA drives to an unRAID VM to see if everything works and is fully functional without any errors.  unRAID only requires 512 MB of memory and XP can run off of 256-512 without too many issues, so it should work for testing.

 

With ESXi, you MUST have a 64-bit capable processor and I would recommend at least 2 GB of memory and a reasonably fast hard drive to store the VM's.  Once you start running on the bare metal hypervisor versus the software one, thing speed up considerably and opens many more options.

 

I hope others are testing this and report back their findings.  It sounds like everyone has the same desire to eliminate systems that are wasting energy and lower costs.  I have this vision of a NAS box being able to perform several functions and it seems like unRAID in conjunction with VMware is the closest to accomplishing it at this time.  Of course if Windows Home Server had a better form of data protection (ala unraid) instead of just mirroring, then it's a whole new ballgame.

 

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That's kinda what I'm aiming for in general. My dev box died and I've replaced it with a quad core that's completely overpowered for what I was doing. Collapsing the unRAID system into it would also allow me to get rid of excess traffic on my network as I can migrate my torrent client into a VM on the same system.

 

When you do your testing are you planning on modifying the VM Memory size to see if there's a "sweet spot" for caching? I've got 4gb on the system now, it will hold up to 16 and I wouldn't object to performing RAM upgrades down the road if there is benefit to be gained from something larger than 1 or 2gb.

 

And of course the big question I run into is: I'm thinking about scrapping the whole system and drive array that my unRAID server is running on (2x 1.5 TB, a 1 TB, 2x .75TB and a .5TB) and grabbing a pack of new 2TB drives to build on. Problem is, I only have the one license for unRAID. ;) If I make a new VM with a new disk pack, how do I get the data over given that there is only "one server"...

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Well the test with my backup server didn't go quite so well.  After numerous issues with a CPU upgrade, I found out VMware ESXi requires 2 GB of memory - my backup system only has 1 GB.  So, this project is on hold until I can scrounge up so more memory since I will not jeopardize my production system until i can verify everything is working.  Still interested to hear anyone else's experiences with this.

 

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By the way for those that don't already know about this site (although it's already pretty well known lol): http://www.vm-help.com/ . Very good material there regarding ESXi what I was most interested in was the White Box hardware list - http://www.vm-help.com/esx40i/esx40_whitebox_HCL.php .  I'd rather not spend $1500 on uber components if I don't have to :).

 

Awesome.  The Asus M4A785T-M and this Intel PCI network card looks like a good AMD based candidate.  

You can get these Intel nic's for less on ebay almost any day of the week.

 

It's also a good board in case it gets repurposed.

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By the way for those that don't already know about this site (although it's already pretty well known lol): http://www.vm-help.com/ . Very good material there regarding ESXi what I was most interested in was the White Box hardware list - http://www.vm-help.com/esx40i/esx40_whitebox_HCL.php .  I'd rather not spend $1500 on uber components if I don't have to :).

 

Awesome.  The Asus M4A785T-M and this Intel PCI network card looks like a good AMD based candidate.  

You can get these Intel nic's for less on ebay almost any day of the week.

 

It's also a good board in case it gets repurposed.

 

There's also a custom oem.tgz available that will get the onboard NIC working. Right now I have the Intel NIC in the current unRAID box while I work in getting my new drives in so in testing I've had to use the onboard. Works just fine. :) (Although I have a slightly different model from ASUS that has the same Chipset)

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By the way for those that don't already know about this site (although it's already pretty well known lol): http://www.vm-help.com/ . Very good material there regarding ESXi what I was most interested in was the White Box hardware list - http://www.vm-help.com/esx40i/esx40_whitebox_HCL.php .  I'd rather not spend $1500 on uber components if I don't have to :).

 

Awesome.  The Asus M4A785T-M and this Intel PCI network card looks like a good AMD based candidate.  

You can get these Intel nic's for less on ebay almost any day of the week.

 

It's also a good board in case it gets repurposed.

 

There's also a custom oem.tgz available that will get the onboard NIC working. Right now I have the Intel NIC in the current unRAID box while I work in getting my new drives in so in testing I've had to use the onboard. Works just fine. :) (Although I have a slightly different model from ASUS that has the same Chipset)

 

What motherboard are you using?  Please link to the oem.tgz you are using.

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http://www.vm-help.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=1272  is where I pulled the oem.tgz for the NIC card, the board is an ASUS M4A78L-M. Physically looks the same as the board you're using, has the same NIC chipset in it. That oem.tgz should allow you to get a secondary NIC online. :)

 

Actually, I just migrated my unRAID off of an Asus M4A78L-M which is now sitting idle so that is kinda cool that you are working with the same board.

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[glow=red,2,300]Good news.  I (linux novice) was able to get ESXi 4.1 installed with Realtek 8111 support.  If I can, anyone can so give it a try.[/glow]

 

I just got ESXi 4.0 installed.  I'm running it off a flash drive. To get this to work I downloaded the ESXi 4.0 installation CD image and copied it the first of two flash drives.  The first one is used to run the installation and get it installed on the second flash drive.  So I'm booting ESXi 4.0 off a flash drive at the moment.  Over the next week I'll be attempting to install the 4.1 update and doing some configuration.  

 

Prior to installing 4.0 on the first try...I was trying to install ESXi 4.1 which failed in so many ways that it turned out to be pretty nearly the worst hair puller I've had.  If you attempt to install 4.1 and it doesn't work *first time* then stop right there and install 4.0.  If you search on google you will find all sorts of variations on how to install 4.1.  In my experience, it either works right away or forget about it!  

 

 

Biostar TA785G3-HD

G.Skill 1 x 4GB 1600 (running at 1333)

Intel Pro 1000/GT nic (for now)

Phenom II X4 B45 + CoolerMaster Vortex Plus

I don't have a CD drive on my target ESXi machine so I wanted to install using a flash drive.  And I want to run ESXi off of a flash drive.  So here is a quick installation primer for doing just that.

 

1. Do this on your windows or linux desktop. (prepare the installation media)

Download ESXi iso file from VMware.

Download UNetbootin - will be used to copy the install CD iso onto a flash drive.

Use a flash drive with 2GB capacity or greater.

Run Unetbootin, select the the ESXi iso file and the flash drive.  Bingo it copies the install image onto the flash drive.

 

2. Do this on your ESXi host machine. (run the installation)

Get a second flash drive.  Mine is 4GB but I think you could probably use a 2GB for this as well.

Stick the first flash drive that has the CD image on it into your ESXi host machine and remember you may need to go into bios and set it to boot this flash drive.

Boot the machine.  As it's booting it will stop momentarilly on a ESXi menu.  Stick in your second flash drive now that it has identified which one to boot from.

Answer the simple install questions and select the second flash drive for it to install onto.  Bingo, it installs ESXi on the second flash drive.

 

Now you can take out the first flash drive because it's only needed for installation.  Boot from the second and you should have ESXi running.

 

FYI: I was also able to install ESXi onto an IDE hard drive using the first flash drive as the installer.

 

EDIT: I installed the update from ESXi 4.0 to 4.1.  OMG, every step of the upgrade process has bugs and requires workarounds that had to be googled for.  What a fricken embarassment.  Nearly 5 years of my own positive sentiment towards their products has been ground away doing all this.  

 

EDIT Oct. 21:  Eureka!!  I found a way to install 4.1.  Here's the second OMG moment.  After more reading online I came across a posting saying that using a cheap usb CD drive enabled one person to get ESXi 4.1 to install.  Another tried many different flash drives and found one that worked for him.  So, with that in mind I tried every one of my 6 different flash drives - to no avail.  Still I'm not one to give up without a totally all out fight...I opened up an OLD Shuttle SV25 computer not even being used anymore and took out the ancient IDE DVDrom drive.  This drive has "manufactured July 2000" printed on it's label.  This ancient drive loads and installs the ESXi 4.1 software.  The ESXi 4.1 hypervisor is great but the installer is a tetchy bit of crap.

 

EDIT Oct. 22:  Rebuilding the ESXi 4.1 ISO to include Realtek 8111,8168 drivers.

Lots of hunting and pecking brought me to Engwar's VMware ESXi on Realtek NIC page.  The short version of the rebuild story is it takes 4 files, 3 of which you get from Engvar's page.  You put these 4 files in a single directory on a linux machine.  One is a bash script.  You run the script.  It asks lots of questions and I took all the defaults.  The script outputs the new customized ESXi ISO and you install from it.  That's all there is to it.  It's working for me.

From Engwar:

  mkesxiaio_4.0.sh

  inetd.conf

  RTL8111_8168_P55_integr_SATA_Ctrl.(AHCI).oem.tgz

From VMware:

  VMware-VMvisor-Installer-4.1.0-260247.x86_64.iso

 

Engwar's script output a file called and I used it to install ESXi:

VMware_esxi_custom_4.1_wget_rsync_sftp_ftp_RTL8111_8168_P55_integr_SATA_Ctrl.(AHCI).oem.iso

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I had just started playing around with Unraid last week-end with the free 3 server license to see if I liked it, and I was very pleased except at the idea of having to sacrifice a box to unraid alone or having to resort to getting it setup on dev environment with VMware server....

 

Needless to say, when I saw this thread I was jumping around as this is exactly what I was looking for. I have ESXi 4.1 up and running just fine thanks to Bryanr's greatly detailed setup and I also have my unraid vm working just fine to.

 

Here is my setup:

 

ASUS P5K Deluxe

6 GB RAM

2 * 1 TB WD caviar black

1 * 500 GB WD (500AKS series)

1 * 250 GB WD (this one is the one that is being used as the data store)

 

Initial parity sync was at ~58000K

 

I was wondering if anybody else has come across what I am seeing: the unraid console does not display the Hard Drive temperatures, and although they are marked as "spinned down" I have my doubts that they are and was wondering how to check that. (the doubt is based on the physical heat I feel the drives emiting, as well as the fact I don't hear them spin up or down when I request it via the console).

 

Initially I had my SATA adapter in the BIOS set as IDE rather than AHCI, and the drive temperature was showing up as "*", when I changed it to AHCI the drive temperature now shows up as "0 C". I was under the impression that via pass through the drives would be communicating directly with the VM.

 

I've been looking around to see if I can get does details directly from the vSphere console but it seems to only give me data on read/write outputs and other measures that aren't linked to the temperature or the current drive state (spinned down or not).

 

 

Any thoughts ?

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Here's something I noticed while installing ESXi:

When I started out I hadn't yet gotten the Realtek drivers into the install so I was using an Intel nic.  So upon the first fuctional install with the Realtek drivers I still had the Intel nic installed and the Realtek was still disabled in the bios.  I then shutdown and pulled the Intel nic and enabled the Realtek but when the machine booted it failed.  Then I left the Realtek enabled and reinstalled the ESXi and afterwards the hypervisor worked with the Reatek.

 

I'm going to speculate if you changed from IDE to ACHI after installing then ESXi may not have installed some drivers.

 

The hypervisor is some customized linux distro so you can telnet into it.  Maybe from there you can try some smart commands on the drives.

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I got ESXi 4.1 installed on CF card with IDE adapter (needed to add customized drivers to support  network - Realtek 8111C on GIGABYTE GA-MA780G-UD3H motherboard) - and it runs great.

 

However run into problem with unRAID VM which configured with physical RDMs and LSI SAS controller - emhttp see drives and allow to correctly assign them in Devices page, it restarts md-mod driver with correct parameters (major/minor device numbers) but then  md-mod driver can not import drives - scsi inquiry doesn't return correct model and s/n. hdparm also doesn't work.

 

i looked at driver code (md.c) but can't figure out what exactly goes wrong there -  small test program which uses almost the same ioctl calls with scsi query works fine - serial and model numbers are returned correctly. Almost - because it uses user space ioctl instead of kernel ioctl_by_bdev executed by driver.

 

Oct 21 23:56:58 Tower emhttp: unRAID System Management Utility version 4.5.6

Oct 21 23:56:58 Tower emhttp: Copyright © 2005-2010, Lime Technology, LLC

Oct 21 23:56:59 Tower emhttp: Basic key detected, GUID:

Oct 21 23:56:59 Tower emhttp: shcmd (1): udevadm settle

Oct 21 23:56:59 Tower rc.local_startup[1517]: Initiating Local Custom Startup.

Oct 21 23:56:59 Tower emhttp: Device inventory:

Oct 21 23:56:59 Tower emhttp: pci-0000:03:00.0-sas-phy0:1-0x5000c29db5f14ed2:0-lun0 host1 (sda) ST31000528AS_6VP06JTM

Oct 21 23:56:59 Tower emhttp: pci-0000:03:00.0-sas-phy1:1-0x5000c29a767a1bee:1-lun0 host1 (sdb) ST31000528AS_6VP06L45

Oct 21 23:56:59 Tower emhttp: pci-0000:03:00.0-sas-phy2:1-0x5000c29f90899daf:2-lun0 host1 (sdc) ST31000528AS_6VP05VMM

Oct 21 23:56:59 Tower emhttp: shcmd (2): modprobe -rw md-mod 2>&1 | logger

Oct 21 23:56:59 Tower emhttp: shcmd (3): modprobe md-mod super=/boot/config/super.dat slots=8,16,8,32,8,0 2>&1 | logger

Oct 21 23:56:59 Tower kernel: xor: automatically using best checksumming function: pIII_sse

Oct 21 23:56:59 Tower kernel: pIII_sse : 2358.000 MB/sec

Oct 21 23:56:59 Tower kernel: xor: using function: pIII_sse (2358.000 MB/sec)

Oct 21 23:56:59 Tower ifplugd(eth0)[1452]: Link beat detected.

Oct 21 23:56:59 Tower kernel: md: unRAID driver 0.95.4 installed

Oct 21 23:56:59 Tower emhttp: Spinning up all drives...

Oct 21 23:56:59 Tower kernel: md0: import: scsi_inquiry (std inquiry) error: -14

Oct 21 23:56:59 Tower kernel: md0: import: scsi_inquiry (vpd: unit ser no) error: -14

Oct 21 23:56:59 Tower kernel: md: import disk0: [8,16] (sdb) offset: 63 size: 976762552

Oct 21 23:56:59 Tower kernel: md: disk0 wrong

Oct 21 23:56:59 Tower kernel: md1: import: scsi_inquiry (std inquiry) error: -14

Oct 21 23:56:59 Tower kernel: md1: import: scsi_inquiry (vpd: unit ser no) error: -14

Oct 21 23:56:59 Tower kernel: md: import disk1: [8,32] (sdc) offset: 63 size: 976761496

Oct 21 23:56:59 Tower kernel: md: disk1 wrong

Oct 21 23:56:59 Tower kernel: md2: import: scsi_inquiry (std inquiry) error: -14

Oct 21 23:56:59 Tower kernel: md2: import: scsi_inquiry (vpd: unit ser no) error: -14

Oct 21 23:56:59 Tower kernel: md: import disk2: [8,0] (sda) offset: 63 size: 976762552

Oct 21 23:56:59 Tower kernel: md: disk2 wrong

 

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In my case I've noticed that hdparm -y does end up working when manually triggered via console (although it errors out):

 

# hdparm -C /dev/sdc

 

issuing standby command

SG_IO: bad/missing ATA_16 sense data::  70 00 00 00 00 00 00 18 00 00 00 00 0 00 00 00 00 09 0c 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 40 50

SG_IO: bad/missing ATA_16 sense data::  70 00 00 00 00 00 00 18 00 00 00 00 0 00 00 00 00 09 0c 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 40 50

HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(standby) failed: Input/output error

 

PRIOR TO COOL DOWN:

 

# smartctl -A /dev/sda | grep 194 ; smartctl -A /dev/sdbrep 194; smartctl -A /dev/sdc | grep 194

194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   112   107   000    Old_age   Always           38

194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   109   105   000    Old_age   Always           41

194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   108   104   000    Old_age   Always           39

 

AFTER COOL DOWN:

 

# smartctl -A /dev/sda | grep 194 ; smartctl -A /dev/sdb | grep 194; smartctl -A /dev/sdc | grep 194

194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   120   107   000    Old_age   Always       -       23

194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   118   105   000    Old_age   Always       -       22

194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   116   104   000    Old_age   Always       -       22

 

hdparm -S however is still yielding no results... So I'm currently looking for a way to have something else monitor drive idle time and then input the commands to spin down my drives.

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hi, have you made any further testing on this topic, like rebuilding the array?

I'm really interested on the stability of this setup.

 

thanks in advance

Hi all,

 

Sorry I haven't been in here in a while.  So far, my ESXi set up has been perfectly stable.  The physical box is a Dell PE840 with 4GB RAM.  I've got a 'stock' UnRAID installation in one VM, a CentOS 5.x VM that provides 'core' networking services for my home LAN (dhcp, dns, mail, etc), and a Fedora 13 server that has Sabnzbd, Sickbeard and Couch Potato installed.  I'm using NFS to mount my UnRAID shares on my other VMs.

 

The only downside I've found so far is that the UnRAID VM doesn't have vmwaretools installed, so when I power down my ESXi server, UnRAID doesn't get cleanly shutdown.  Building vmwaretools should be possible, but I need to get some time to put together a dev environment in order to build the necessary kernel modules.  In the meantime, I've install vmwaretools on my Fedora box, and I've written an init.d script to remotely shutdown my UnRAID server whenever the Fedora box is shutdown.

 

Cheers,

Bryan

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The only downside I've found so far is that the UnRAID VM doesn't have vmwaretools installed
Sorry, actually, that was a total lie - I don't get drive model / serial numbers or temperature readings.  Smartctl did seem to occassionaly be able to read the temperature, but its intermitant.  My guess is that spin up/down will also be effected.  There's errors in the logs about this, but I'm not too bothered about any of that to be honest - minimal effect on power consumption for me as I only have 4 disks.

 

Cheers,

Bryan

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There's something devouring my plans for following through with an ESXi build... storage expansion.  As far as I've read, the AOC-SASLP-MV8 definitely does not work with ESXi.  Does anyone have any recommendations?  At this point it's the only major hold up that I've run into.

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Hi all,

 

I finished to setup my UnRaid server on a ESX server yesterday. I'm currently copying my 4TB from my old box to the new virtual one.

 

I'm missing the temperature readings, but I still did not have the time to check wether the drves get actually spun down. I'll have to check after the copy is done.

 

There's something devouring my plans for following through with an ESXi build... storage expansion.  As far as I've read, the AOC-SASLP-MV8 definitely does not work with ESXi.  Does anyone have any recommendations?  At this point it's the only major hold up that I've run into.

drealit, you'll find here http://ultimatewhitebox.com/iocontroller a list of ESXi  compatible storage controller.

 

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The problem is that I'm trying to look more in line with what the MV8 offers in terms of features vs. price.  The devices in the lists I've seen on the site you linked to along with the white box list that I had listed earlier are either 3-4x more expensive and unnecessary or the device is outdated and still priced for unneeded features.

 

If anyone can think of any comparable cards that is still within that $100> price range, that would be fantastic.

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