I'm currently putting together some ideas for a new VMHost using ESXi with RAID 5 to replace 3 aging ESXi hosts that have no RAID. However I can't seem to find any good info explaining how to monitor and rebuild a RAID 5 'online' with ESXi as the host OS. I know ESXi can be installed onto a RAID volume but how can a fault be detected and the raid rebuilt without shutting down the system, replacing the drive, booting into the RAID BIOS and initiating a rebuild. Is there a specific feature in a RAID card I should be looking for? Can this be done with IPMI or something similar?
EDIT: So this is a small home lab, I don't have the full brunt of corporate money behind me to leverage HP Smart Arrays. I was attempting to do this on the cheap. I meant to explain that I was planning hardware RAID 5 through Direct Attached Storage. However it's becoming ever more evident that using network storage is the more preferred option here. My worry again is over running my small budget with newer NAS servers and 10Gbe switches, etc… I am and plan to continue to control the ESXI through vSphere. I realize some RAID systems can be configured to rebuild, but I was hoping to gain more control over the raid and initiate a resyc or a scrub, alert me to failures, etc… I'm currently using ESXi 5.1 but have no problem upgrading to 5.5.
Best Answer
There is no information about versioning so I would try to be as much useful as possible without entering into too much detail. I assume you have a vSphere system controller the ESXi.
There are CIM providers that are able to monitor specific hardware devices. You can find a list here. In this other link, you can find an example for an specific model (MegaRAID).
Regarding degraded RAID groups (with faulty disks), normally the system starts the rebuild once you replace the disk that belongs it.
Hope this helps.