Here is a quick post on how to remotely manage an LSI MegaRAID card in an ESXi host with MegaRAID Storage Manager, aka MSM.

Setup

• ESXi 5.5 u2 host
• LSI MegaRAID SAS 9261-8i (this guide will work on most 926x and 927x cards)
• Windows 7 SP1 physical client

Required software

• LSI MegaRAID Storage Manager, MSM, latest version from LSI’s page. (I used version: 14.08.01.02)
• LSI SMIS Provider VIB for ESXi. (I included the offline bundle into the ESXi ISO before installation. Read the instructions here. I used version: 500.04.V0.53-0003)

How to get it working

I have read multiple guides on doing this very simple thing. However, most of the tricks did not work or was not an issue for me. Here is what was needed for me to get it working with this setup.

1. Make sure the LSI SMIS provider is working. Do you get health indications from the RAID card in vSphere?  If not; stop here, install it and make sure it is working.
2. Enable SSH on the host and connect to the host over SSH
3. View the hosts file with cat /etc/hosts
4. Copy the line with the IP address to the server, for example:
   172.17.1.1  hostname.domain hostname
5. On the client Windows machine, edit the hosts file* and add a row for each hostname found in step 4, for example:
   172.17.1.1  hostname.domain
   172.17.1.1  hostname
6. Start LSI MSM from the client. Change the search setting to ESXIMON servers, save, and then enter the IP of the local machine (not the host IP) in the search field.
7. Hit search and the host should appear with the correct hostname and IP.

(*) Right click on a link to Notepad (or a custom text editor) and choose Run as administrator. Select File – Open, and enter the following file name:

C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

I hope this helps the RAID administration! Let me know if you succeed or not in the comments.