Installing SATA RAID card in Vmware Server
I have a Windows 2003 SP2 Standard where a SATA RAID card is installed and working. On this machine I installed VMware server. On VMware server I installed Windows 2003 Standard. The SATA RAID card is not seen on the Windows 2003 virtual system. I tried installing the drivers of the card for W2K3 on the host, but it shows the device with a exclamation in device manager. What should I do to have this card installed properly?
Thank you.
Thank you.
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http://communities.vmware.com/message/351842 << That discusses it.
You will need to configure the SATA Raid on your Host System and create the virtual disks for your virtual machines on it.
VMWare server/workstation does not pass-through PCI cards - only usb, video, sound and network adapters.
VMWare server/workstation does not pass-through PCI cards - only usb, video, sound and network adapters.
ASKER
vanderwee, can you detail a bit more?? How do I configure SATA Raid and create the virtual disks for the virtual machines?! Thanks.
It might pay to let us know what you are trying to achieve?
Reboot the server- physical VMWare server. During the DOS boot process there should show the initialization of the RAID adapter and to press CTRL+H to configure
From there you can configure the type of RAID array you want RAID 0,1,5 or 10
Otherwise from within the Windows VMWare server you should be able to install the drivers and web-based raid configuration utility. Configure the RAID array as required.
Once you have configured the RAID array you can then creat a disk under: computer management -> disk management
Let us know how you go.
Reboot the server- physical VMWare server. During the DOS boot process there should show the initialization of the RAID adapter and to press CTRL+H to configure
From there you can configure the type of RAID array you want RAID 0,1,5 or 10
Otherwise from within the Windows VMWare server you should be able to install the drivers and web-based raid configuration utility. Configure the RAID array as required.
Once you have configured the RAID array you can then creat a disk under: computer management -> disk management
Let us know how you go.
ASKER
vanderwee. Thanks for the comment. The SATA RAID card is installed on a Dell server and a SATA unit (external) is connected to this card. On this SATA unit there are 4 SATA drives configured on a RAID 5. This is working in the current OS (W2k3 Enterprise) and it shows as F: drive letter. What I need is to be able to have this same configuration under the virtual W2k3 system which means be able to see this same drive as the F: drive. Basically for this I only need to have this virtual OS detect the SATA card (correct?) and then the manufacturer's software takes care of managing it.
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Just to add one more comment - the huge benefit for everything being virtual is that you can have a billion host servers, all with different physical hardware, and you can move that guest from one host to another (even from windows to linux) with out any changes because to the guest everything stays the same (still have the same virtual video card, virtual hard drive controller, etc...).
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