S.M.A.R.T data from disks behind LSI MegaRAID Controller in ESXi 5.1

Question

I was looking at ways to get S.M.A.R.T info and R/W stats from drives behind LSI MegaRAID controller (9260-4i) in ESXi 5.1. ESXi has a command "esxcli storage core device smart get" to get S.M.A.R.T data from drives but it doesn't work for disks under the LSI RAID controller. I have been looking at ESXi docs and LSI docs with no clue so far.I assume it could easily be done in Linux using smartctl. Has anybody been through similar situation or has some ideas on how this could be done? The information that I am looking for is smart log pages and Read/Write performance of individual disks.

Solution

You haven't added the version of ESXi you're using, but drivers for the 9260-series should ship with vSphere 5.1 - annoyingly I don't have the link to reference this, but I've been bitten by exactly the same bug before using the exact same controller with vSphere.

You can need to follow this procedure to install MegaCLI for vSphere - this will allow you to run the MegaCLI command via either SSH or the ESXi Shell (just follow the guide but don't flash any firmware).

To view SMART data and array health via the vSphere Client GUI, you'll need to install the CIM provider and install using the same procedure as above - all of the downloads for the 9260-4i are on the LSI website.

You should end up with a result like this:

Comments

[user1189899]

I am using 5.1. I was able to get the information that you got but I am interested in SMART log pages and Read/Write performance counters for individual drives in the RAID array.

[ewwhite]

@user1189899 Why? Shouldn't you just care if the drive is good or bad? ESXi is not a general purpose operating system.

[user1189899]

Things are not always good or bad. There are times when they are in between. We had experiences in the past where some of the disks were sluggish (RAID controller didn't indicate so) and smart data helped us diagnose it.

[col.panic]

I am also using 5.1 - and installed the vib but the storage element never appears. I have also tried to deinstall/reinstall yet keeps the same.