Creating NVMe RAID Configurations

  1. Open Advanced > Intel(R) Virtual RAID on CPU > All Intel VMD Controllers > Create RAID Volume.

    Figure 82. Creating Volume without enabling RAID spanned over VMD controller

    Figure 83. Creating Volume with enabling RAID spanned over VMD controller

  2. Set Name.

  3. Set RAID Level.

  4. If cross-controller RAID is required, select Enable RAID spanned over VMD Controller.

  5. Select specific disks for RAID with an [X].

    • RAID0: Select at least two [2–24] disks

    • RAID1: Select only two disks

    • RAID5: Select at least three [3–24] disks

    • RAID10: Select only four disks

  6. Select Strip Size (Default 64 KB).

  7. Select Create Volume.

  8. If another RAID is needed, start again at step 1.

Status Indications

An LED indicator on the drive carrier shows the RAID status of the drive.

Drive Carrier Status LED Indicator

Status

State (red)

Normal function

Off

Locating

4 Hz blinking

Fault

Solid on

Rebuilding

1 Hz blinking

IBPI SFF 8489 Defined Status LED States

Hot-Swap Drives

Intel VMD enables hot-plug and hot-unplug for NVMe SSDs, whether from Intel or other manufacturers. Under vSphere ESXi, several steps are necessary to avoid potential stability issues. See the information at link [1] below.

Hot-Unplug

  1. Prevent devices from being re-detected during rescan:

    esxcli storage core claiming autoclaim --enabled=false

  2. Unmount the VMFS volumes on the device. Check link [2] below for details.

  3. Detach the device. Check link [3] below for details.

  4. Physically remove the device.

Hot-Plug

  • Physically install the device.

ESXi will automatically discover NVMe SSDs, but a manual scan may be required in some cases.

Related Information Links

  1. https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2151404

  2. https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/6.5/com.vmware.vsphere.storage.doc/GUID-1B56EF97-F60E-4F21-82A7-8F2A7294604D.html

  3. https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/6.5/com.vmware.vsphere.storage.doc/GUID-F2E75F67-740B-4406-9F0C-A2D99A698F2A.html