We were in the process of upgrading our ESXi 5.1 to 5.5 U3 and before we were upgrading the firmware on our IBM System x3650 M4 servers using the IBM BOMC. Doing so, it upgraded the RAID controller firmware to version 23.31.0-0023.
After the upgrade, the host booted but the local datastore didn't mount and gave an error when trying to mount it. We were also unable to delete it. The RAID configuration showed no errors. It was a RAID1 composed of 2 HDD and 1 Hot Spare. Easy enough right.
We contacted VMware and they suspected something was wrong with the storage on this server. Everything was working fine before we upgraded the firmwares.
VMware recommended we rebuilt the RAID configuration and try to do a clean install of ESXi 5.5 U3 using the Lenovo custom image.. It fails.
I even tried to install 6.0 U2 using the Lenovo custom image.
The DSA, IMM2 and UEFI versions running are shown below.
This is the first time this has ever happened to us and we are at lost and praying for ideas.
Anyone's help would be welcomed.