Dell PE 2950, PERC 6/i Controller. – ESXi 5.1 installed/Boot from USB drive. 2 x 1 TB SAS drives in RAID 1 – Datastore1.1x 2TB SATA drive set as RAID 0.
We wish to host all our VMs from Datastore1 and add the 2 TB SATA as a Raw Disk mapping to one of the VMs. This option is at the moment greyed out. We wish to use this as a simple storage no other purpose.
My questions
1. Does PERC 6/i support RDM, if not is there a work around to add the local SATA as a RDM.
2. I was only able to see our 2 TB drive in Vsphere after configuring it as RAID0, our intention is to make this as a NON RAID drive. Does removing it from the RAID help in anyway?
3. Is it compulsory to confugre all onboard drives into the RAID? can I see my 2 TB drive in ESXi without adding it into RAID.
P.S – I understand one workaround is to create a VM on top of this 2 TB. I am worried about several other factors and wish to keep this as a last option
Best Answer
Yes you are right. The actual size shows it as around 1.8 TB.
I finally managed to add it as a RDM using the below help (With a few minor changes) http://vm-help.com/esx40i/SATA_RDMs.php
But after doing so I now realise that moving raw data/files to this volume from a local USB/system is a very daunting task in itself. As my requirement was to use this as a raw storage, I have around 1.5 TB of data I want to load into this disk and then use it across the VMs. I spent whole night comparing the data copy speeds from outside into these disks and below are my observations.
Outside to the disk, when added as a ESXi datastore (not as RDM to VM) - 5 mins for 10GB. Outside to the disk, when added as a RDM to a VM - 25 mins for 10GB.
I wonder if there is a way to add an existing NTFS volume as a datastore without loosing data or needing to format it with VMFS?
I understand all these queries of mine are probably not common, hence have stared considering a NAS. But just want to see if there is anyone who has any tips/tricks to get this done.