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eger
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

4 port SAS/SATA RAID support the ESXi CIM?

I am looking for a comparable card to the Adaptec 2405. I recently purchased this card and set it up for use in my new ESXi machine. It works great except that the health monitoring does not show drive status! This is a real let down...

I am wondering what a comparable card to the 2405 would be that supports health monitoring?

I am reading that possibly LSI are the only cards with CIM support and the LSI 8704ELP looks to be the closest comparison. But I cannot find this card on the compatability list (only the 8708ELP).

Will the 8704ELP work (I would think it is the same driver as the 8708ELP)? Any other cards I can consider?

My goal: hardware RAID 10 with 4 drives and health monitoring for the array in ESXi.

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nick_couchman
Immortal
Immortal

CIM monitoring is the bulk of how ESXi accomplishes hardware health monitoring, so finding a card that supports CIM is going to be your best bet.

As far as the LSI card,do you know what chipset the card has? If the chipset is the same, the odds of it working are pretty good. Also, if you can somehow get the PCI ID of the 8708ELP, you can check it against the ones that ESXi "knows" about and see if it turns up.

eger
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I took the plunge and purchased the LSI 8704ELP. It is suppored just as the 8708ELP is and shows the individual drive status in the Health Monitoring. However this card seems to be almost 1.5X slower than the Adaptec 2405. It is such a shame that Adaptec has no CIM support for ESXi. I truly feel Adaptec has the superior card, at least in the 4 port entry level hardware RAID.

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eger
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Purchased 8704ELP to test myself. It does indeed work and is the same PCIID as the 8708ELP. Currently works in my test ESXi 3.5 Build 158874.

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informec
Contributor
Contributor

Does anyone have a solution for a 2405 with ESXi 4.0 U1?

I am about to try an LSI 9240-4i which is *supposed* to have CIM support, but I guess we'll see.

Any advice from folks that are actually able to monitor their array would be WELCOME! Smiley Happy

Thanks-

Dave

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