UCS C220 M3 - FlexFlash question

[dagerson]

Hi- 

I'm running ESXi 5.5 on one SD card in FlexFlash, but would like to add a 2nd one to complete the raid for safety.   

Does the card need to be formatted by the BIOS setup in order to work?  I tried just inserting another 16GB card, but web interface throws an error that the sizes do not match.  Both are 16GB, but 1 is class 10, and the other is a newer class 1 ultra fast card.  

thanks for any advice.

[Keny Perez]

dagerson,

First thing to clarify... Even though CIMC may say RAID degraded with one card only, the 2 cards make a mirror but do not work like RAID cause if one card fails and you install a new one, the array is not rebuilt like disks do (FYI)

Are both cards Cisco branded?

You dont need to format the cards for them to make the mirror, yuo need to access the SCU (either from the card itself by enabling the partition or downloading it from cisco.com) and once inside of it, hit on the icon that synchs up the cards.

-Rate ALL helpful answers.

Kenny

[Keny Perez]

Hello,

Did I answer your question? If so, please mark it as such for future users to know you found what you were looking for...

-Kenny

[Shahzad Arain]

Hi,

Following document will be helpful

http://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/solutions/collateral/data-center-virtualization/unified-computing/whitepaper_C11-718938.pdf

Regards,

Shahzad

[vcube.giovanni.vecchi]

@sarain

The doc you linked says "If the SD card is blank, all partitions will be marked with an error":I tried with a blanked one (not Cisco branded) but it doesn't show any partition, as if they were not activated.

Must the SDCard be purchased from Cisco?

Thanks.

[Keny Perez]

It must, we do NOT support third party SD cards.

-Kenny

[vcube.giovanni.vecchi]

@kenperez

Thanks for your reply.

What do you mean with "we do not support"? Are third party SD cards not supported in case of trouble or do they simply not work?

Thanks

[Keny Perez]

"unsupported" and "do not work" are 2 different things, if you install a third party card and it does not work, the first thing TAC will tell you is that you need a Cisco branded SD card

-Kenny

[vcube.giovanni.vecchi]

Thanks for your reply @kenperez

In case of emergency situation (like original Cisco SD Card broken and no spare part), does anyone know if there is a way to create partitions in a third party SD card?

Thanks a lot

[Keny Perez]

If you have 2 SD cards in the server, you can mirror them... low % of chances that both will go bad before you can get a new one

-Kenny