Virtualization: Best Windows based (Virtualbox, VMWare, etc).

RimBlock · 24 Aug 2011 at 08:57

Oh dear, another raid card has come in to the picture...

It seems that the IBM M1015 is a rebadged LSi 9240-8i which is their entry level raid controller but with raid 5 disabled until you buy a key from IBM. The price difference between the 9211-8i and the 9240-8i is around 30USD and the M1015 can be flashed with the IT firmware making it in to a HBA (i.e. a 9211-8i).

Now the downs... it seems the M1015 is not supported by ESXi and although the LSi 9240 is, reports are that the card hangs ESXi loading the drivers.

Now more ups... it also seems that flashing it to the IT firmware works fine with ESXi and I have found someone selling some from new server pulls for around 100USD cheaper than buying new per card. Now it just depends on whether they will sell to me as I am not in the US or Europe.....

RB

Update: ok took the plunge (what harm has that done me before......

) and after finding someone selling new IBM ServeRaid M1015s for 105USD (each) inc US shipping I have bought two. A single LSI 9211 is around 260USD. Found someone reviewing the Lenovo TS200 that comes with a M1015 and stating it works fine in ESXi but if not then I have full instructions to flash it.

As an aside, I still do not know how to take a configured virtual machine and make it a template so I can make other VMs based on it. I tried copying the VM hard drive file to another directory then creating and the new VM with the same parameters and linking it to the copy of the original VM drive but it boots and cannot see a network card. It is the installing and configuring I wish to get away from for any new CentOS minimal installs as it has taken quite a bit of time to get one machine up to where I would like it.

RimBlock · 25 Aug 2011 at 04:11

Little_Crow said:
I didn't realise till your post that the facility to do this is unavailable without a Virtual Center server.
Google provides many ways to achieve this, the most common method seems to be using VMWare converter to take a clone of your machine and then use that clone as a template.

Another method is to copy the entire contents of the VM folder to another folder (using vmkfstools via the CLI) , then right click the vmx file and select 'add to inventory'.
A few people say this method is much faster, but others say it just doesn't work.

Give them a shot and see what works for you.

Had a look at Google but there seems to be quite a bit of conflicting info hence the question.

I will have a go with the CLI option.. Presumably I can go this while other VMs are still running as long as the 'template' VM is shutdown ?

Thanks
RB

RimBlock · 7 Sep 2011 at 10:56

Just upgraded to ESXi5 and all is going fine. Moved some VMs to a SSD and have replaced my 1068i SAS controllers with 9211i (reflashed IBM M1015) controllers and all is looking nice and stable. Shame the M1015s are not supported but flashing was easy once I found a motherboard sas2flsh could see the controllers in.

One thing I have the impression of (didn't record details so prior to upgrade so have no proof) is that WHS 2011 VM is using a bit more resource.

Any ideas on how to work out which USB ports should be passed through to a VM for using an external USB drive. I don't see the USB drive connected in the configuration->advanced->passthough devices

Thanks
RB

RimBlock · 8 Sep 2011 at 02:17

The HP 212 was more expensive than the M1015 and I have been doing this on a very tight budget.

If you have a 212 going then yeah, that would be great. I sure we can work something out. Email in trust. Thanks for the generous offer.

I work on the software rather than hardware side of the corporate world so unfortunately don't get access to the discarded bits

.

One other thing I have now noticed is that the et1000 networking between VMs is dog slow...

Transferring from a Linux VM to my WHS VM only give me around 7MB/s. I have a dual port intel card on the way which I intend to use in the server and then use my single port Intel card as a passthough to the WHS VM. Not sure how the dual port Nic will show up in ESXi (single device or two network devices able to be split).

Does ESXi support bonding ?. My HP Procurve 1810 does.

Thanks.
RB

RimBlock · 12 Sep 2011 at 03:39

I received my dual port Intel PCIe 4x card (well cards as it turns out I bought a 5 pack :confused:

).

Copying from my NAS VM to my PC gave 30MB/s. Putting in the new card and using VT-d for passthrough to my NAS (single network port) upped the transfers to around 80MB/s.

Now I just have to get one of my CentOS VMs to take the other port and the original PCI card will service the rest of ESXi and VMs on that box which have low network requirements.

Will post speed of VM to VM with nic passthrough transfer and VM to VM with both having passthrough nics when I get round to it. Surprised the networking is so slow unless it is resource bound (i.e. 1 VM being allocated only 30% available bandwidth max) which, whilst I keep remembering seeing something like that, I have not checked yet.

RB