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I have a DLL R515, and i just added an SSD to it.

In vSphere, if i go to Configuration -> Storage Adapters -> and my "Dell PERC H700 Integrated" controller i see that there is a new row which says exactly the same as the once that are working, except Type is set to "enclosure" (What does this mean?), Driver type is set to "Unknown" and capacity is set to "" (empty string)

Since VMWare is finding it, should it not be able to use it? Does it need to format it or am i missing something here? What is causing it to appear like this, and not be usable?

The other devices is created in the bios, as raids and drives that are sort of wrapped. I was hoping to get this one working directly, without the raid/creating a virtual configuration...

I also wonder why it does not appear in the Configuration -> Host Cache Configuration -> Add Storage -> Disk/LUN -> Should not my SSD be here?

Bjørn
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2 Answers2

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Go to BIOS PERC setup. As you wish to simply pass the SSD through, the way to accomplish this is by configuring a new RAID0 virtual drive with only your single SSD.

You can setup PERC by BIOS (requires reboot) or OMSA (does not). For the latter see these questions:

Community
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kubanczyk
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  • So you are telling me that i have to reboot my server to add a new drive? I imagined these serveres were supposed to be on 24/7, not rebootet everytime you wanted to add a new drive? – Bjørn Aug 10 '13 at 09:13
  • Not necessarily, I've updated the answer. – kubanczyk Aug 10 '13 at 10:01
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No, you'll seen to create a virtual disk comprising of the SSD in order for ESXi to see it. There's no direct option in this case, if going through the RAID controller.

You do have the option of connecting to a motherboard SATA port (assuming SATA SSD), but it may not be worth the effort.

So I'm also curious about the use of host cache. This implies very heavy memory pressure in your environment. Are you just testing, or do you need this in order for the system to perform well?

ewwhite
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  • I am just testing.. i have 64 GB of ram, and not even using all of it... What i really would like to at a later point is to make IO operations increase with use of the SSD disk, not by adding the VM to the SSD, but too use it at some sort of cache... if you have knowledge of this, then i would love to learn :) – Bjørn Aug 10 '13 at 09:15