My sensors disappear after some time.

[Black Ninja]

Hardware used:
ESXI 5.5 U3b
X9SCI-LN4F/E3-1230v2/32GB RAM
LSI 9271-8i

I did install everything like suggested in this thread.

All worked fine for a while (see pic) , then it disappear(see pic). If I reboot ESXI it will come back, and stay there for around a month then go away again ?!

What Am I doing wrong ? Does this happens to anybody else ?

P.S. Sometime even the whole "storage" section is gone.

 

[joeschmuck]

Question: While the drives are indicated as not present, are they actually not present, meaning is your data available or is the fact your data is not available and this is why you are asking the question?

I have not had this happen to me, that I'm aware of.

You could install ESXi 6.5. I am running both 6.0 and 6.5 on two different machines. I know that means that you need to use the less fun web UI but at least the software is more up to date. Just a thought.

 

[Black Ninja]

Question: While the drives are indicated as not present, are they actually not present, meaning is your data available or is the fact your data is not available and this is why you are asking the question?

Fortunately , this doesn't affect the raid card operation. No drives or controllers are actually disappearing from esxi, just the health info is gone and also I can no longer monitor raid card status from Windows VM running LSI Management software. But I can ssh in to esxi and run storcli command and I can see raid card status from there.

I am assuming this has something to do with lsiprovider driver. Cause he is the one who bring this functionality in a first place.

You could install ESXi 6.5. I am running both 6.0 and 6.5 on two different machines. I know that means that you need to use the less fun web UI but at least the software is more up to date

This trade off is too much to take. Can you imagine: The same browser that brings all the the viruses, crashes, malware mining crypto-currency in another tab, all the vulnerabilities in browser and java together and I am going to secure control my VM in another tab. No thanks. You realize VM is not doing this for your sake you know, to bring you better software.

 

[joeschmuck]

You realize VM is not doing this for your sake you know, to bring you better software.

Yes I do, VMware just wants you to purchase the add-on software to make everything work cleanly. I wish I could afford to pay for it but even if I could, I'm not sure I would for a home project like this. If I couldn't use ESXi then I would just roll back to FreeNAS on bare metal or try another VM software package.

I am assuming this has something to do with lsiprovider driver.

Very possible and actually likely.

 

[Black Ninja]

Very possible and actually likely.

Yeah I think so too. But I wish somebody enlighten me what the problem is. I read here and there about some CIM server that perhaps should be running, but I never had this thing running in a first place and it was working after reboot. I don't know enough about this service and it's relation to the problem to know how to fix it.


P.S. It's not that I am lazy about researching and solving problems, but sometimes it takes too much time to figure, thinker ,read and test to get something to work(that should work in a first place) that you don't have a time to actually use it. In this ESXI 5.5 hyper-visor, with this hardware , with this (lsi 9271) raid card I got almost everything to work perfectly , after more than a year of messing with it I just want to get to the last piece of the puzzle, fixed and enjoy just using and maintaining it.

I could try esxi 6.0 (since stil have the C+ software vshere), I could buy a lsi 9361 (like jgreco mention a year ago) it's not even more expansive than 9271 , but I don't want to jump in a whole new ocean of new issues that I have to spend a year ot two to deal with it. I rather have a older hardware and software , that is rock solid and I won't have constantly go back to fix issues so I can move forward with new things.

 

[Black Ninja]

Also I am trying to download the latest lsiprovider driver which at the moment is 00.66.V0.02 (06/23/17) , but is says : "VMWare 6.0 / 6.5 SMIS Provider VIB "(readme.txt)

So I don't know if trying to install this on ESXI 5.5Ub is a good idea, otherwise I have go back in archive in get a year old version that has "VMWare 5.5 / 6.0 SMIS Provider VIB".



P.S. Some times the software maker , don't mention older software not cause is not compatible with it, but just cause expects people alredy move to the new one. I don't know if that's the case with lsi provider driver.