ESXi 6.5 – RAID – Lenovo System x3650 – CIM Provider

ibm-xseriesraidvmware-esxi

Background:

We have a new Lenovo System x3650 Type 8871 server. Specs below:

  • Lenovo System x x3650 M5 8871EMG 2U Rack Server
  • 1 x Intel Xeon E5-2650 v4 Dodeca-core (12 Core) 2.20 GHz – 2 Processor Support – 16 GB Standard/768 GB TruDDR4 Maximum RAM
  • 12Gb/s SAS RAID Supported, Serial ATA Controller
  • Gigabit Ethernet
  • RAID Level: 0, 1, 10
  • 1 x 750 W – Matrox G200eR2 16 MB Graphic Card
  • Lenovo RAM Module – 16 GB – DDR4 SDRAM – 2400 MHz DDR4-2400/PC4-19200 – 1.20 V – ECC – Registered
  • CL17 – 288-pin – DIMM Lenovo Gen3 – Hard drive – 1.2 TB – hot-swap – 2.5 – SAS 12Gb/s – 10000 rpm – for Flex System x280 X6 Compute Node
    -System x35XX M5, x3850 X6, x3950 X6 System x 750W High
    Efficiency Platinum AC Power Supply

It is running the Lenovo Customized Image ESXi6.5 (based on ESXi 6.5 Vmkernel Release Build 5146846). We have two RAID 10 datastores set up on the server, each datastore consisting of 4 HDs.

Question:

We need to monitor the status of the RAID array, however, the Storage Monitor (found in Host/Monitor/Hardware/Storage) in VMWare vSphere web client tells us:

"The Small Footprint CIM Broker Daemon (SFCBD) is running, but no data
has been reported. You may need to install a CIM provider for your
storage adapter."

Hardware Storage Monitor

VMWare (whom we have Production Support with) tell us the CIM provider isn't included in the customised image, and that CIM provider must come from Lenovo. Lenovo (who answer as IBM support? Go figure) came back to us and told us they needed logs (DSA report or the IMM service data) from the machine that require us to shut the whole host down – this is a production host, we want to avoid that if we can.

For this system, can somebody please direct us to what CIM provider we need to install for it to report to VMWare correctly?

Best Answer

You'll probably want the LSI/Avago VIBs from here:

https://vmware.lenovo.com/content/latest_index/esxi-650-vibs/

Ideally, this would be part of your Update Manager setup, but you can install the Avago VIBs easily.