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I need help with the configuration of RAIDs on the ASUS RS720-E10-RS12 server. We have installed 2x 512GB NVME drives in the motherboard slots and 12x SATA SSDs in the Backplane slots. I can only create a RAID from the NVME disks, and the option for RAID for SATAs is then disabled, or I can create a RAID for SATAs, but then the option for NVME RAID is disabled, which is a huge problem.

We need to set up a RAID for the 2 NVME disks (Mirrored) because we want to install VMWare ESXi on them.

Simultaneously, we need to set up RAID 5 or RAID 6 for the 12x SATA SSDs, which will be used for storage.

The problem is, as I mentioned earlier, that if I turn on Intel(R) VROC for NVME, I can create a RAID 1 from these two NVME disks, BUT it automatically switches all my SATAs to AHCI mode, while I need to keep them in RAID mode.

I am trying to configure this through the BIOS - American Megatrends - Aptio Setup - AMI.

So, is there any way to configure one RAID pool from two NVME disks for the system and at the same time another pool from the 12 SATA SSDs for storage?

hanshenrik
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demon420
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    Removed unnecessary fluff. – TomTom Aug 28 '23 at 07:42
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    Can VmWare not do Raid itself? If that is the case, the whole question is irrelevant - RAID the NVME discs for boot, then use VmWare level Raid to raid the storage SSD. – TomTom Aug 28 '23 at 07:43
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    Hello TomTom, as far as i know, there is no way I can configure RAID in VMWare ESXi. Maybe I am missing some knowledge but everybody is saying that can´t be done. – demon420 Aug 28 '23 at 08:22
  • Well, not a VmWare user here - I use Hyper-V, but I would find thae lack of any sofware level raid astonishing. Hyper-V on Windows does that - with Raid across multiple servers - out of the box, and I am always told VmWare is better... – TomTom Aug 28 '23 at 09:03
  • Yeah, that's exactly what I was told too – that VMware is better. – demon420 Aug 28 '23 at 09:25
  • And as per answer from NISMO1968 there IS a raid possibility. – TomTom Aug 28 '23 at 12:14
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    We switched from VMware to Proxmox VE entirely a few years back. Our Linux expertise really paid off: We found it amazingly more comfortable to work with PVE than VMware. MD-RAID, LVM and even ZFS are easily manageable as PVE is just Debian under the hood. – iBug Aug 28 '23 at 17:16
  • Maybe you just need a real RAID controller. – U. Windl Aug 29 '23 at 06:47
  • I have installed two PIKE II 3108-8i controllers. Now, I am able to create RAID through Intel VROC for NVME drives on the motherboard. Additionally, I can create hardware RAID arrays through the Avago MegaRaid in the BIOS for SATA disks, which is fantastic. However, I have encountered an issue. I noticed that there are TWO Avago MegaRaid entries in the BIOS. In one of them, I can see 8 SATA disks, and in the second one, I see the remaining 4 SATA disks. My question is: Can I create a RAID configuration using both controllers, so that all 12 SATA disks will be included in the RAID setup? – demon420 Aug 31 '23 at 06:53
  • @demon420 no you can't make RAID across 2 RAID controllers. You need one controller with more ports such as 3108-16i. – wazoox Aug 31 '23 at 17:57

2 Answers2

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VMware doesn't support any sort of a software RAID concept, so you're out of luck here. What you can do however:

I. Software RAID

(1) Keep your UEFI-controlled & mirrored NVMe drives as a boot option. As long as VMware is OK with your pseudo-hardware RAID, of course! You should be fine with vROC & ESXi so far.

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/85889

(2) Chop some part of the mirrored NVMe space as a local VM datastore.

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/7.0/com.vmware.vsphere.storage.doc/GUID-5F08F7A7-6D8E-45A6-B408-278B3A4C7D4C.html

(3) Configure a VM with powerful software RAID, doing either whole controller PCI pass-thru or just individual SATA SSDs pass-thru. There are two options basically: FreeBSD-based TrueNAS "Core" (Debian Linux-based "Scale" shouldn't be used due to the overall immaturity) and Linux-based StarWind SAN & NAS. Later is preferred actually as unlike TrueNAS it supports both ZFS and MDRAID+XFS combo which is faster for SSDs, and has pre-built VMware virtual machine deployment out-of-box.

https://www.starwindsoftware.com/san-and-nas

(4) After you have it done you add iSCSI or NVMe-oF connection in a loopback and configure a new VM datastore, this one is software RAID protected.

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/8.0/vsphere-storage/GUID-9C92500A-A408-4E91-BBA6-D90B5995D891.html

II. Hardware RAID

You can keep booting your system from the software-mirrored NVMe drives and just drop in an extra LSI RAID controller just for SATA SSDs. You won't get any better performance or data integrity as both ZFS and MDRAID+XFS rock, but at least it might be less complicated to manage. Just make sure your new shiny RAID is on VMware HCL.

https://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/detail.php?deviceCategory=io&productid=44985

NISMO1968
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The ASUS RS720-E10-RS12 uses an Intel PCH C621A, which supports VROC (for the NVME drives) or RSTe (for the SATA drives), depending on BIOS configuration.

Anyway, VMWare does not support RAID arrays based on RSTe, so you are not going to see your SATA array inside VMWare.

As a side note, "VMWare is better" generally refer to its leading position as virtualization platform. But the hardware support provided by QEMU/KVM (Linux) or HyperV (Windows) is much larger. For VMWare you should search the HCL (hardware compatibility list) before buying anything.

shodanshok
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