ESXi 6.7 Troubleshooting
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@G-I-Jones said in ESXi 6.7 Troubleshooting:
The H330 is like for labs or testing. Shouldn't be found in a production environment. It's a fine card for what it is, just not a production use card
Begs the question why when ordering a server for a specific purpose, they would even ship that out.
People mix up the H330 and the HBA330.
Both are LSI SAS3008 cards but with different firmware.
It can do one million IOPS and transfer 6GB/sec but it doesn't have any cache.Entry and mid-level servers come with the H330.
HBA330 is primarily a Host Bus Adapter and it's what you order for running vSAN or any type of software raid.Both have their place in production servers. It just depends on what they are used for.
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@G-I-Jones said in ESXi 6.7 Troubleshooting:
The H330 is like for labs or testing. Shouldn't be found in a production environment. It's a fine card for what it is, just not a production use card
Begs the question why when ordering a server for a specific purpose, they would even ship that out.
Because it's functional and meets some people's requirements. Customers demand it, so vendors supply it. Companies sell what people buy, the question isn't why someone would sell it. The question is, why would someone buy it? In your case, you guys chose that card and justified to Dell why they are making and selling it - it makes them money. They don't care why you chose that card, they only know that you did (presumably because someone wanted the cheapest hardware RAID possible) and that you did is what makes them make sure that they keep providing that option for the future.
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@pmoncho said in ESXi 6.7 Troubleshooting:
Also, Dell does not even have a Celeron processor on the list for anything higher than a T340. Logic tells me they know its is not a good idea. Apparently selling an H330 on a T/R440 or higher hasn't hit the "not a good idea" level yet.
Define "not a good idea."
Not a good idea: Selling configurations that no one buys and do not encourage people to buy something of higher profits.
Selling a Celeron in a server makes the server look low end and would undermine higher cost sales. Selling it logically would not make sense. No one would buy it, and it would not help sell better configurations.
Selling the H330 makes absolutely sense in every way. Tons of people choose it for whatever reason, so selling it directly is profitable. It also encourages buying a second RAID card later, making them even more money so double justifying it.
It's a great idea for them to sell the H330. Now everyone sells things that are bad ideas to buy. The question is why are people buying these things, not why someone is selling them.
People will sell whatever makes them money. It is always buyers, never sellers, who truly determine what is for sale. if buyers wanted Celeron configurations in any quantity, you bet your bippy that Dell would have them as options immediately.
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@Pete-S said in ESXi 6.7 Troubleshooting:
@G-I-Jones said in ESXi 6.7 Troubleshooting:
The H330 is like for labs or testing. Shouldn't be found in a production environment. It's a fine card for what it is, just not a production use card
Begs the question why when ordering a server for a specific purpose, they would even ship that out.
People mix up the H330 and the HBA330.
Both are LSI SAS3008 cards but with different firmware.
It can do one million IOPS and transfer 6GB/sec but it doesn't have any cache.Entry and mid-level servers come with the H330.
HBA330 is primarily a Host Bus Adapter and it's what you order for running vSAN or any type of software raid.Both have their place in production servers. It just depends on what they are used for.
I struggle to find a place for the H330 in production. The combination of low performance, but high cost and hardware risk just make it a crazy component. Dells makes it because the cost to do so approaches zero, and it earns them profits. But I can't think of any real world scenario in production where someone should buy it. It's an awesome lab unit for testing platform systems, so that it exists or is purchased in general make absolute sense, but deploying to production - feels like something would have to be wrong.
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@pmoncho said in ESXi 6.7 Troubleshooting:
I get it, although, to even sell an H330 on a Dell PowerEdge R840 is like selling standard breaks on a Audi A6 and making the driver request anti-lock breaks.
They used to do this until the law changed and I can tell you as someone from snow country, this is what good drivers want. Anti-lock brakes kill a few good drivers to save even more bad ones. For the majority, they are great, should probably be required by law. But it totally screws people that know what they are doing and have that control. I've known a lot of people having anti-lock induced accidents, mostly in snow.
The point being, like anti-lock brakes, the H330 is something customers demand. If Audi had customers demanding not to have anti-lock brakes (and they could sell them) then it would only make sense for them to sell that configuration. The H330 is exactly like that, it has use cases, it has customer demand. Dell is absolutely faultless here. In fact, we'd be upset with them if they refused to sell us configurations that we need.
Every server vendor, every hardware RAID vendor, offers configurations like this. Every single one. Why? Because it is one of the most widely demanded solutions. If Dell didn't offer this, people would go to another vendor to get it.
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@scottalanmiller said in ESXi 6.7 Troubleshooting:
@Pete-S said in ESXi 6.7 Troubleshooting:
@G-I-Jones said in ESXi 6.7 Troubleshooting:
The H330 is like for labs or testing. Shouldn't be found in a production environment. It's a fine card for what it is, just not a production use card
Begs the question why when ordering a server for a specific purpose, they would even ship that out.
People mix up the H330 and the HBA330.
Both are LSI SAS3008 cards but with different firmware.
It can do one million IOPS and transfer 6GB/sec but it doesn't have any cache.Entry and mid-level servers come with the H330.
HBA330 is primarily a Host Bus Adapter and it's what you order for running vSAN or any type of software raid.Both have their place in production servers. It just depends on what they are used for.
I struggle to find a place for the H330 in production. The combination of low performance, but high cost and hardware risk just make it a crazy component. Dells makes it because the cost to do so approaches zero, and it earns them profits. But I can't think of any real world scenario in production where someone should buy it. It's an awesome lab unit for testing platform systems, so that it exists or is purchased in general make absolute sense, but deploying to production - feels like something would have to be wrong.
It's the kind of card you'll buy when you:
- don't know what you're doing
- know exactly what you are doing
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@Pete-S said in ESXi 6.7 Troubleshooting:
@scottalanmiller said in ESXi 6.7 Troubleshooting:
@Pete-S said in ESXi 6.7 Troubleshooting:
@G-I-Jones said in ESXi 6.7 Troubleshooting:
The H330 is like for labs or testing. Shouldn't be found in a production environment. It's a fine card for what it is, just not a production use card
Begs the question why when ordering a server for a specific purpose, they would even ship that out.
People mix up the H330 and the HBA330.
Both are LSI SAS3008 cards but with different firmware.
It can do one million IOPS and transfer 6GB/sec but it doesn't have any cache.Entry and mid-level servers come with the H330.
HBA330 is primarily a Host Bus Adapter and it's what you order for running vSAN or any type of software raid.Both have their place in production servers. It just depends on what they are used for.
I struggle to find a place for the H330 in production. The combination of low performance, but high cost and hardware risk just make it a crazy component. Dells makes it because the cost to do so approaches zero, and it earns them profits. But I can't think of any real world scenario in production where someone should buy it. It's an awesome lab unit for testing platform systems, so that it exists or is purchased in general make absolute sense, but deploying to production - feels like something would have to be wrong.
It's the kind of card you'll buy when you:
- don't know what your doing
- know exactly what you are doing
LOL. Pretty much.
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@pmoncho said in ESXi 6.7 Troubleshooting:
@Dashrender said in ESXi 6.7 Troubleshooting:
@G-I-Jones said in ESXi 6.7 Troubleshooting:
The H330 is like for labs or testing. Shouldn't be found in a production environment. It's a fine card for what it is, just not a production use card
Begs the question why when ordering a server for a specific purpose, they would even ship that out.
Because they are not your IT - at least, they shouldn't be.
I get it, although, to even sell an H330 on a Dell PowerEdge R840 is like selling standard breaks on a Audi A6 and making the driver request anti-lock breaks. While there are some users that prefer standard breaks, my guess would be the amount of users requesting a trade down to standard brakes is minuscule.
Also, Dell does not even have a Celeron processor on the list for anything higher than a T340. Logic tells me they know its is not a good idea. Apparently selling an H330 on a T/R440 or higher hasn't hit the "not a good idea" level yet.
EDIT - Reread my post - Dell just gets under my skin sometimes! Didn't mean to come off jerky.
you aren't the one I was replying to
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@DustinB3403 said in ESXi 6.7 Troubleshooting:
ESXi recommends SD card, USB is a bit to fragile for the number of writes you'd be making to it.
M.2 SSD is the recomendation. SD cards lack any kind of ECC and the controllers are too dumb to prevent read discards. Throw in the fact that cheap SD cards are slow on boot, you can log local on a M.2, I'd say for non-lab usage M.2 is the recomendation going forward.
If you must go embedded SD card, I'd get at least 32GB as it will likely have fewer read endurance issues.
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@scottalanmiller said in ESXi 6.7 Troubleshooting:
The H330 is like for labs or testing. Shouldn't be found in a production environment. It's a fine card for what it is, just not a production use card
It's fine for a boot device but on Dell 14G most people use BOSS cards(Unless they are maxing out the PCI-E bays, and then getting a H330 embedded version)
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@pmoncho said in ESXi 6.7 Troubleshooting:
ESXi is loaded all into memory after boot up. Other than USB disk checks, nothing is stored on the USB key after the hypervisor is loaded. It mostly writes to the USB key on reboot/shutdown.
It is on embedded installs. (not on full version installs).
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@travisdh1 said in ESXi 6.7 Troubleshooting:
Does your Dell have the SD card reader? If so, it runs the SD cards as a RAID1 array.
SD Card raid controller are "Kinda raid" there's no patrol read, there's no scrubbing, and it they have ugly habbit of not always flagging failure correctly (forcing you to rip out the bad card).
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@pmoncho said in ESXi 6.7 Troubleshooting:
You really only need a 4GB USB key but I like to use 8GB or higher as they are still cheap for a higher quality USB key.
If your doing embedded installs PLEASE get at least 32GB. Your going to have issues with a crash dump partition either now or in the future with 4/8GB at some point.
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@pmoncho said in ESXi 6.7 Troubleshooting:
I get it, although, to even sell an H330 on a Dell PowerEdge R840 is like selling standard breaks on a Audi A6 and making the driver request anti-lock breaks.
The H330 is at least 10x better than the dumpster fire that was the H300 (256 vs. like 25 QD). Still no cache, bastard megaraid on a HBA blah blah blah is all true.
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@StorageNinja said in ESXi 6.7 Troubleshooting:
@scottalanmiller said in ESXi 6.7 Troubleshooting:
The H330 is like for labs or testing. Shouldn't be found in a production environment. It's a fine card for what it is, just not a production use card
It's fine for a boot device but on Dell 14G most people use BOSS cards(Unless they are maxing out the PCI-E bays, and then getting a H330 embedded version)
Good point, a straight boot device setup it is great for.
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@StorageNinja said in ESXi 6.7 Troubleshooting:
@DustinB3403 said in ESXi 6.7 Troubleshooting:
ESXi recommends SD card, USB is a bit to fragile for the number of writes you'd be making to it.
M.2 SSD is the recomendation. SD cards lack any kind of ECC and the controllers are too dumb to prevent read discards. Throw in the fact that cheap SD cards are slow on boot, you can log local on a M.2, I'd say for non-lab usage M.2 is the recomendation going forward.
If you must go embedded SD card, I'd get at least 32GB as it will likely have fewer read endurance issues.
are servers starting to come with M.2 slots specifically for this? that would make sense - it also makes booting systems much easier I would think.
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@Dashrender said in ESXi 6.7 Troubleshooting:
@StorageNinja said in ESXi 6.7 Troubleshooting:
@DustinB3403 said in ESXi 6.7 Troubleshooting:
ESXi recommends SD card, USB is a bit to fragile for the number of writes you'd be making to it.
M.2 SSD is the recomendation. SD cards lack any kind of ECC and the controllers are too dumb to prevent read discards. Throw in the fact that cheap SD cards are slow on boot, you can log local on a M.2, I'd say for non-lab usage M.2 is the recomendation going forward.
If you must go embedded SD card, I'd get at least 32GB as it will likely have fewer read endurance issues.
are servers starting to come with M.2 slots specifically for this? that would make sense - it also makes booting systems much easier I would think.
I have not seen any M.2 on dell servers yet. With that being said, they R840 the OP has, there are two rear 2.5" SATA (HDD/SDD) bays that may/may not be used for a boot device. Have not looked to find out if it is possible though.
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@pmoncho said in ESXi 6.7 Troubleshooting:
@Dashrender said in ESXi 6.7 Troubleshooting:
@StorageNinja said in ESXi 6.7 Troubleshooting:
@DustinB3403 said in ESXi 6.7 Troubleshooting:
ESXi recommends SD card, USB is a bit to fragile for the number of writes you'd be making to it.
M.2 SSD is the recomendation. SD cards lack any kind of ECC and the controllers are too dumb to prevent read discards. Throw in the fact that cheap SD cards are slow on boot, you can log local on a M.2, I'd say for non-lab usage M.2 is the recomendation going forward.
If you must go embedded SD card, I'd get at least 32GB as it will likely have fewer read endurance issues.
are servers starting to come with M.2 slots specifically for this? that would make sense - it also makes booting systems much easier I would think.
I have not seen any M.2 on dell servers yet. With that being said, they R840 the OP has, there are two rear 2.5" SATA (HDD/SDD) bays that may/may not be used for a boot device. Have not looked to find out if it is possible though.
yeah, I've seen servers in the past with internal HDD/SSD, it only makes sense to keep moving forward and put M.2 in there for this purpose - I would assume less space needed in chassis, less power consumption, less cooling possible, etc.
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@pmoncho said in ESXi 6.7 Troubleshooting:
I have not seen any M.2 on dell servers yet
All 14G servers AFAIK support adding in a "BOSS" card that has 2 M.2 slots.
https://i.dell.com/sites/doccontent/shared-content/data-sheets/en/Documents/Dell-PowerEdge-Boot-Optimized-Storage-Solution.pdf -
@StorageNinja said in ESXi 6.7 Troubleshooting:
@pmoncho said in ESXi 6.7 Troubleshooting:
I have not seen any M.2 on dell servers yet
All 14G servers AFAIK support adding in a "BOSS" card that has 2 M.2 slots.
https://i.dell.com/sites/doccontent/shared-content/data-sheets/en/Documents/Dell-PowerEdge-Boot-Optimized-Storage-Solution.pdfby making it a card - it just seems like a way to charge more money, but yeah.. that's what I'm talking about.. Nice to see it's an option.
