VMware ESXi 5.5 and LSI RAID monitoring

Adding LSI RAID controller status to VI client and connecting to ESX using MSM (Megaraid Storage Manager) running on Windows.

Download LSI CIM provider, it's the one named "Latest SMIS Provider" and for VMware ESX 5.5. It's listed as for ESX on LSI website, but of course really for ESXi.

Unpack downloaded ZIP and copy "offline_bundle" ZIP inside it to datastore.

Login to ESXi using SSH and install downloaded package. You MUST use full path, cd to vmfs and then trying to do install will fail.

esxcli software vib install -d /vmfs/volumes/ESX08-DS01-HDD/VMW-ESX-5.5.0-lsiprovider-500.04.V0.53-0003-offline_bundle-2152533.zip

After waiting for a while you should see

   Message: The update completed successfully, but the system needs to be rebooted for the changes to be effective.

Reboot ESXi host and after that you'll can see status of LSI raid controller in VI Client. Information provided is very sparse so we need MSM for full view.

Download "Latest Megaraid Storage Manager (MSM) for Windows". Unpack 14.08.01.01_Windows_MSM.zip and install using defaults except disable LDAP.

Add your ESXi hosts to c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts, MSM won't work otherwise. You also must be on same IP subnet as MSM does some silly local network broadcast/multicast checks. Names entered must match with those  configured on ESXI servers.

Launch MegaRAID Storage Manager. Click Configure Host on right side of first screen. New window opens, select "Display all the ESXi-CIMOM servers in the local network". Click Save Settings and apply changes.

After a while list of servers appear. Click one to manage and login as "root" using VMware admin password.

For more details see here.