3 "Unconfigured Good" and 3 "Online" Drives

[KennethButler24475]

Hi,

Having some trouble setting up a new UCS server. I'm trying to replace a damaged server with a new one. I'm using 3 brand new drives (Unconfigured Good) and 3 from the old server that was a part of a RAID 5 setup (Online). I'm not able to install ESXi as it is not seeing a storage device during the setup process. Do I need to delete the RAID 5 Virtual Drive first (I don't intent to rebuild from the RAID since it only consists of 3 drives)? Any assistance is appreciated!

[Kirk J]

I would delete the remnants of the old raid 5.

Then create your new raid volume, marking it as 'bootable'

If you have 4K sector based drives, or your boot volume will exceed 2TB, then you will need to configure your boot to be UEFI and not legacy.

Kirk...

[KennethButler24475]

Hi Kirk,

Thanks for the reply. I was able to get this going yesterday by removing the virtual drive and creating a new one like I figured. I installed VMware onto it and I'm now getting a 60 day evaluation period warning. Do you know if there's a way to retrieve the license if I no longer have the old damaged system I replaced?

[Kirk J]

If the Vmware license was purchased through Cisco, then you 'might' be able to track it down via serial # of the original server.  If it was an 'OEM' type, then probably won't be able to trace it down.

PM me the serial # of the server.

Kirk...

[KennethButler24475]

Sent.

[Kirk J]

That server was sold as a Call manager appliance type server, and was shipped with an OEM VMware ESXi type license (the pid is VMW-VS6-HYPPLS-K9).  The licenses on these used PAKs, which were used on the VMware site, in turn to generate the usable ESXi code keys.  If the hardware is still under warranty, you could try opening a 'licensing' case, and see if they can match up the sales order, from the serial #, and then the original PAK codes.

Kirk...

[Steven Tardy]

I recently wrote an externalized a document on what to do once an end customer has a VMware "PAK" from Cisco.

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/servers-unified-computing/vmware-esxi-cisco-ucs/220421-register-vmware-licenses-purchased-from.html