This is done by going into esxcli and running the appropriate command. Once ESXi is installed you will then need to tag the HDD’s as local and the SSD’s as local and SSD. You can now exit the Smart Array Storage Administrator and reboot the host. DO NOT CLICK “Enable HP SSD Smart Path”. Selecting “Array H – 1 Logical Drive(s) shows the following for one of the SSD’s: Selecting “Array B – 1 Logical Drive(s) –> “View More Details” shows the following details for one of the HDD’s: When completed click on Arrays and select one that you created and it should look like this: Repeat the process for each disk (HDD and SSD). Accept all the following defaults except you should Disable Caching. You’ll be prompted for various options for this “Logical Drive”. From the main screen, click Unassigned Drives on the left hand column, choose a single drive, and click “Create Array”.Ĭlick “Create Array” to create individual RAID 0 disk groups for each individual disk. Next, we need to create individual RAID-0 disk groups for each disk drive (HDD and SSD). Leave “Enable Write Cache When Battery/Capacity Not Present or Not Completely Charged” set to Disabled
In this case the 279GB drive will be used to install ESXi so caching can be left enabled for it, as indicated by the green check mark. Make sure all the drives that are to be used for VSAN are not selected under “Select the Logical Drives for which caching is to be enabled”. Upon booting the server, when the P420i Smart Array Controller message appears, press Ĭonfigure –> Cache Manager –> Caching Settings I captured some screen shots that step though the P420i setup.
Here’s a link to the full PDF details: Optimized solid-state drive performance with HP SSD Smart Path P420i Setup Walkthrough for VSAN This process accelerates reads for all RAID levels and writes for RAID 0” HP SSD Smart Path technology allows I/O requests that meet certain requirements to bypass the normal I/O path involving firmware layers, and instead use an accelerated I/O operation called HP SSD Smart Path (seen in figure 1). “ HP SSD Smart Path improves the performance of select HP Smart Array Controllers in SSD-based HP ProLiant Gen8 servers. Here’s the description from the HP “Optimized solid-state drive performance with HP SSD Smart Path” Technical white paper: Finally, there’s an option to enable HP SSD Smart Path and enabling it can accelerate reads and writes. So, you can deselect all of the disks that will be used for VSAN, thus disabling Read cache for them. I recently discovered that you can also selectively pick and choose which disks to enable cache for. In the case of the HP P420i, you cannot disable the I/O Controller cache so VSAN recommends setting it to 100% Read which essentially disables Write cache. Also, when destaging write cache, we want to ensure that the writes are committed to disk and not in I/O Controller cache. Since VSAN handles Read and Write caching at the software layer, there’s no need to do it at the hardware level. In general, VSAN recommends disabling Read and Write cache for any I/O Controller. OK, a little background/overview on I/O Controller guidance for VSAN.
HP ProLiant Smart Array Controller Driver for VMware vSphere 5.5 (VIB file)
To resolve, follow these directions to implement the correct driver: The value listed under AQLEN is the queue depth of the storage adapter.Run the esxtop command on the ESXi shell / SSH session.
Here’s how to check your hosts IO Controller (storage adapter) queue depth: The bug reduces the queue depth to 28, instead of 1020, causing poor performance in VSAN. Bear in mind, I am not an HP server hardware expert, so your comments are greatly appreciated.īefore I go too far, there is a bug in the HP async controller driver for the HP 420i that is included in the HP ESXi image. There are things I’ve discovered that might not be obvious but can help in the VSAN setup.
Others are looking for guidance from VMware on how to configure for VSAN. I’ve been working with many customers over the last several months and found that many are very familiar with HP hardware and just know how to set things up.