Hi all,
I have DELL R530 server with a H330 Raid controller with a vanilla ESXi standalone (stateless) 6.5a. The ESXI is on a drive attached to the controller along with a RAID5 array as vmfs with VMs.
The system was working fine until a reboot. I have now lost all storage volumes and the controller has disappeared from the hardware list. All relevant drivers appear intact.
I suspect I have upgraded the RAID firmware to an unsupported version and/or enabled passthrough for the controller. I don't currently have physical access to this machine, but I strongly believe that the RAID arrays are intact and healthy.
I have tried updating the lsi_mr3 driver through the CLI. I have placed the server into maintenance mode. After copying the vib over, I get "cannot be live installed" and "cannot be live removed" when I try to update. I have also tried the MR_SAS_Providers tools and have also tried updating to 6.5 U1 and it has failed in the same manner. The server will not boot into maintenance mode.
Is it possible ESXI believes it has no space available due to the missing storage controller? (There is plenty of space on the boot drive)
Is there any way of updating anything via CLI in this situation or do I have to physically update using media on the machine (with either DELL/vanilla image)?
Thanks in advance.