ARC1200 support in ESXi

[dikkiedirk]

Software raid or Intel ICH  unless you are using a caching controller and can deal with the costs.

On my unRAID I use an Areca ARC-1200 in advanced raid mode. Works great for that environment.

I doubt I would use it for my desktop. I would use Software or Intel ICH raid first.

 

I have a ARC-1200 that I use in an ESXi box for a Mirrored Data store array and it works great for that (very fast, don't notice the mirror speed at all with Dual 2TB WD Black drives I easily get 100MB write speeds to it).  But doubt it would make sense to use in a RAID0 Windows environment.

 

I just got an ARC-1210 for a great deal, so may test out RAID0 on it before putting it to real work.

 

 

I would definitely use the Areca ARC-1200 or ARC-1210 for an ESXi mirrored Data store without hesitation.

 

 

Since you want the paramount of performance for a desktop I would probably use software RAID0 or RAID1 or the hybrid of RAID0/RAID1 for a windows desktop.  Since each drive would have full SATA speed and usually the controller chipset communicates at a very fast speed with a direct channel.  Now if you had the cash for an x8 Areca controller with large amounts of cache, I would use that. But for a basic desktop, I think software or Intel ICH RAID0 will suffice with minimal expenditure.

 

 

If using any form of RAID0, it's of paramount importance to have regular (or automated backups).

 

Is the ARC1200 supported in ESXi?

[marcusone]

Is the ARC1200 supported in ESXi?

 

Not directly; you have to install a driver.  But its been working great for over a month now.

[dikkiedirk]

Is the ARC1200 supported in ESXi?

 

Not directly; you have to install a driver.  But its been working great for over a month now.

 

Where do you get this driver? From Areca or the ESXi site?

[marcusone]

http://www.areca.com.tw/support/s_vmware/vmware.htm

[dikkiedirk]

Thank you .

[dikkiedirk]

How do I install the ARC1200 driver?

 

Fist lines of the README say:

 

  1). Launch VMware vSphere Client and login the ESXi 5.x server.

  2). In ESXi server console, press <F2> to enter "Customize System/View Logs". Then, enter "Troubleshooting Options" to enable ESXi shell and SSH

  3). If you have a older driver, please remove it from ESXi terminal.

  4). Please copy the vib to ESXi server with scp utility.

  5). Make sure you are in maintenance mode. By vim-cmd /hostsvc/maintenance_mode_enter,

or set ESXi 5.x server into "Maintenance Mode".(select Inventory-->Host-->Enter Maintanence Mode) to enter the maintenance mode.

 

I think step 2 can be skipped, the shell is already enable.

Step 3 too, I don't have an older driver.

Step 4, Where is the scp utility?

 

Must I telnet to the server or something?

 

 

[RitcheS]

1. Extract the contents of the driver zip file.

2. Identify the offline-bundle.zip file(s).

3. Log in to the ESXi host using the vSphere Client with administrator privileges, such as root.

4. Using the Datastore Browser, upload the offline-bundle.zip file(s) to an ESXi hosts datastore.

5. Enter the host into maintenance mode.

6. Log in as root to the ESXi console through SSH or iLO/DRAC.

7. Run this command to install drivers using the offline bundle (this requires an absolute path):

 

esxcli software vib install –d /path/offline-bundle.zip

 

For example:

 

esxcli software vib install –d /vmfs/volumes/datastore_name/offline-bundle.zip

 

Note: If this command fails, unzip the file and try running the same command. Use localcli instead of esxcli if the hostd is not responding.

 

For example:

 

localcli software vib install –d /vmfs/volumes/datastore_name/offline-bundle.zip

8. Restart the ESXi host.

9. You can run this command to confirm that the VIB is installed successfully or not:

 

esxcli software vib list | grep -i <vib_name>

10. Exit maintenance mode.