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MaldonadoW
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Has anyone installed ESXi on an old XW8400 Workstation and make use of the SAS RAID?

So I dug up an old HP XW8400 Workstation, but it is missing some parts and I thought I would see if anyone has this thing running with the SAS RAID, because most of the forum discussions and problems seem to center around the SATA RAID. So is this even possible? I do not want to invest any money and then have it be for NOTHING...

:smileycry:

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DonChino
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Well, you are in luck, because I had this question long ago but I never thought anyone else would bother but YES - it is supported - although everyone out there seems to focus on the SATA RAID which I have not bothered testing, since I use SAS Disks in my workstation as they are MUCH faster and can support MORE throughput. I have ESXi 5.1 Build 1483097 running with 2 SAS 450GB Disks in a RAID 0 configuration and the system just purrs...

It is an old machine, but I was surprised that it has been able to keep up with the latest versions of ESXi which is why I do not bother throwing it out so if anyone is out there looking into buying a CHEAP Workstation that supports ESXi 5.1 with Dual Quad Core Xeons, 32 GB RAM, and SAS RAID then you won't go wrong with this one. You will encounter ONE tiny problem though, but I guess I will wait until others try running this configuration before I share that juicy tidbit although it is relatively easy to overcome and just depends on how you run ESXi...

I will know if you tried it and go SAS...

:smileydevil:

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DonChino
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Well, you are in luck, because I had this question long ago but I never thought anyone else would bother but YES - it is supported - although everyone out there seems to focus on the SATA RAID which I have not bothered testing, since I use SAS Disks in my workstation as they are MUCH faster and can support MORE throughput. I have ESXi 5.1 Build 1483097 running with 2 SAS 450GB Disks in a RAID 0 configuration and the system just purrs...

It is an old machine, but I was surprised that it has been able to keep up with the latest versions of ESXi which is why I do not bother throwing it out so if anyone is out there looking into buying a CHEAP Workstation that supports ESXi 5.1 with Dual Quad Core Xeons, 32 GB RAM, and SAS RAID then you won't go wrong with this one. You will encounter ONE tiny problem though, but I guess I will wait until others try running this configuration before I share that juicy tidbit although it is relatively easy to overcome and just depends on how you run ESXi...

I will know if you tried it and go SAS...

:smileydevil:

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