Deployment guidelines for running VMware vSAN and VMware vSphere VMFS datastores on a Dell H730 controller with the lsi_mr3 driver

Products

• VMware vSAN

Issue/Introduction

The purpose of this article is to outline deployment guidelines for running VMware vSAN (formerly known as Virtual SAN) and VMware vSphere Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) devices attached to a Dell H730 controller using the lsi_mr3 driver.

 

Environment

VMware vSAN 6.0.x
VMware vSAN 6.2.x
VMware vSAN 6.7.x
VMware vSAN 8.0.x
VMware vSAN 6.1.x
VMware vSAN 6.6.x
VMware vSAN 7.0.x
VMware vSAN 6.5.x

Resolution

Note: For more information on the latest driver and firmware combinations, see Best practices for vSAN implementations using Dell PERC H730 or FD332-PERC storage controllers (2109665).

 

VMware best practices guidelines for all vSAN deployments, are to avoid configurations where both VMFS Datastores and vSAN disks share the same storage controller. For more information on these best practices, see Best practices when using vSAN and non-vSAN disks with the same storage controller (2129050).

 

When running vSAN with a Dell H730 controller and the lsi_mr3 driver, these additional best practice guidelines and restrictions apply:

• VMFS datastores on non-vSAN disks should be used only for scratch, logging, and coredumps. VMs should never reside on the VMFS datastore.
• VMware does support ESXi installed on a non-vSAN disk on the H730 with vSAN drives for ESXi version 7.0 and higher. 

VMware works closely with our hardware partners to identify the root cause of the issues with the H730 controller. In the meantime, the above restrictions are in place.

Additional Information

SAS or SATA Controller Personality and Disk Config Mode (53573)