Happy New Year Folks,

 

So I have just upgraded my ESXi host from 5.5 to 6.5d. 

Array HDDs are physically attached via RDM. It seems like ESXi 6 has a slightly different naming convention for the drives, so what used to be called WDC_WD4000F9YZ-09N20L1_WD-WMCxxxxxxxx is now WDC_WD4000F9YZ-0_WD-WMCxxxxxxxx (basically, the f/w version has been removed from the disk ID - actually sensible). So now unRAID believes the config is stale and all its drives are gone... Oh well. Trying to just "seat" them into their right places causes the UI to say "wrong" on each, and consequentially the array won't start.

 

I think the solution is to go "New Config", assign the right disks to their right (old) slots as they should have been, without any "preserve current assignment", and restart. But, I need some confirmation / assurance that this will do what I expect it to: find the drives in their correct slots and start the array successfully (btw, the drives are encrypted, if that changes anything). Specifically, I don't want to lose any data 🙂

 

So: is the above the correct sequence I should go through? Anything else I should be mindful of?

 

Thanks!!

Edited January 2, 20197 yr by doron
Resolve

1 hour ago, doron said:

I think the solution is to go "New Config"

Yes, just make sure all assignments are correct, especially the parity drive, and you can check parity is already valid before starting the array for the first time.

RDMs are a bad idea.  Why don’t you pass through the entire controller?

5 hours ago, johnnie.black said:

Yes, just make sure all assignments are correct, especially the parity drive, and you can check parity is already valid before starting the array for the first time.

Thank you. Indeed, new config worked as expected and without a hitch.

58 minutes ago, StevenD said:

RDMs are a bad idea.  Why don’t you pass through the entire controller?

Basically because the controller is shared with the hypervisor. I could move drives around to get around that, but from my vantage point, RDMs have been working for me flawlessly for years and years now - if it ain't broke, you know...

39 minutes ago, doron said:

Basically because the controller is shared with the hypervisor. I could move drives around to get around that, but from my vantage point, RDMs have been working for me flawlessly for years and years now - if it ain't broke, you know...

But, now it is somewhat broken. 

 

You really should be able to boot barenetal unraid, without ESXi, just in case you run into real issues and nobody will help you because you are virtualized. 

 

Controllers are dirt cheap. 

Edited January 2, 20197 yr by StevenD

 

7 hours ago, StevenD said:

You really should be able to boot barenetal unraid, without ESXi, just in case you run into real issues and nobody will help you because you are virtualized. 

 

Oh, agreed 100%. And I can: once I set the BIOS to boot from the Unraid flash, it will, and will then see all the array drives (that are currently assigned raw via RDM) natively. I will not have all the other VMs currently under this hypervisor, but Unraid will work bare metal.

 

Thanks!

 

13 hours ago, doron said:

once I set the BIOS to boot from the Unraid flash, it will, and will then see all the array drives (that are currently assigned raw via RDM) natively.

But they won't be recognized, you would have to set a new config and reassign them all, check the box saying parity is valid, and then endure a parity check.