Using C220M3 flexflash sd cards as mirrors

[Michael Jorgensen]

I found the following statement on cisco:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns340/ns517/ns224/ns944/white_paper_c11-718938_ps10493_Products_White_Paper.html

Q&A:

Q. I noticed that the servers have two SD slots. Does this mean that I can mirror the physical drives?

A. This feature will be enabled in Cisco IMC Firmware Release 1.5 and later.

So one could install the esxi on the flash hv drive on the flash card (having it on a raid1 300GB harddrive i complete overkill) and have a sort of redundancy if the first flash card gets broken or inaccessible?

I cannot find any docs on how to set this up (want to be sure it is done correctly).

Since the esxi is installed on the flash card it would be vital to have a "failover" option.

[Robert Burns]

Yes, so what the doc is saying is the RAID-1 support for two flash cards is supported with CIMC version 1.5 and onward.

It's all automatic and managed through the CIMC GUI.  You do not have to "create" a RAID-1, the system will do this for you when two cards are present and initialized.

I'll see if I can find some documentation on it.

Robert

[Michael Jorgensen]

Hmm.....  I bought a 16 GB SD flash card(same size as the cisco flash) and inserted it into the slot in the server, but all I succeded i doing was having none of the flash card available in the CUCM.

I have checked that the "flash raid" has been set.

Seeing that it is automatic, I am sure having my problems getting it to work.

A short document/guide would be much appreciated.

-Michae Ellwood

[padramas]

Hello ,

I assume you have CUCM as VM on UCS C220 M3 server. Are you trying to provide access to flash card to the CUCM VM ?

Regarding RAID on flash cards, please share the output of following commands

show cimc detail

scope chassis

scope flexflash FlexFlash-0

show detail

show operational-profile detail

show physical-drive detail

show virtual-drive detail

Padma

[Michael Jorgensen]

No I am not looking for access to the flash card from the CUCM.

I just want to be able to have a "failover" if the flashcard with the HV drive where the esxi is installed fails.

- Michael Ellwood

[Robert Burns]

Michael,

Did you purchase the SD card from Cisco?  Only Cisco FlexFlash SD cards are supported.  3rd Party cards will not detect in the system.

Regards,

Robert

[Michael Jorgensen]

No, this was not a Cisco flash card.
Funny thing though: When I removed the Cisco Flash Card from slot 1 The CIMC was able to detect the non cisco flash card in slot 2.

- Michael Ellwood