USC C220 M3 ESXi Can't see a raid5

[moulasaleem]

Dear All,

During esxi 5.1 installation the raid configuration is not showing instead it is  showing two individual HDDs and I came to know that the embaded raid controller is not supported for esxi installation. 

The server was having esxi and it was working fine. Due to some requirement I have re created the raid after which I am having this issue. 

How the esxi was installed previously on embaded raid controller?

Please help us to install esxi on embaded raid

[Evan Mickel]

ESXi may have previously been installed on a single disk within the system if the drives were still in a JBOD.  There is also technically a difference between what is "supported" and what will work.  The term supported is there to indicate that the OS/hardware vendor have tested the configuration and they have certified it to work.  Therefore it may not be impossible to complete the install on a SW RAID.

However, I would discourage the practice of attempting to complete this installation on the embedded RAID controller for two reasons:

1)  There is a high risk of data loss along with an outage.

2)  Cisco and/or VMware will not support your solution as it is specifically ignoring the documentation.

The best thing to do would be to equip the server to run properly with a hardware RAID controller or perhaps SD cards.  Finally, you could target a single disk for the installation and leave it as a JBOD.

Thanks and best regards,