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COS
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RAID Controller compatable with ESXi 5.5 U1 and 2

I've been testing on some HP servers and the RAID controllers are the P4xx series.

Now, these work perfectly fine at their stated speeds of SAS 6G. But once you plug in a SATA 6G drive/SSD to it, guess what?

It dumbs your SATA 6G down to SATA 3G. These are OEM'd from LSI and I have heard that even some of their standard controllers do the same thing.

So my question is, does anyone know of an inexpensive SATA RAID controller that is in the HCL for ESX 5.5 U1 or 2 that will not dumb my SATA 6G to SATA 3G?

Onboard cache is optional but to required. It will need to accept an SFF8087 SAS Cable and be PCI-s 2.0.

This is all for LAB testing so the least expensive the better.

Navigating through the VMware HCL for a controller card is difficult when you also need the price......lol

Thanks

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cykVM
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Think there are no ways around LSI regarding cheaper SAS RAID Controllers. There are some Adaptec Series 6 controllers, but they seem to have other compatibility issues with VMWare. Most server vendors (DELL, HP, Intel, IBM/Lenovo, Fujitsu) rely on OEM LSI chipsets.

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JarryG
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I've been using both original LSI-controllers, as well as some oem-models for some time, but never heard of this problem. What controller/drives exactly are you using?

_____________________________________________ If you found my answer useful please do *not* mark it as "correct" or "helpful". It is hard to pretend being noob with all those points! 😉
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cykVM
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You may refer to the following LSI compatibility guide which lists tested HDDs/SSDs and controllers with their link speed:http://www.lsi.com/downloads/Public/RAID%20Controllers/RAID%20Controllers%20Common%20Files/MegaRAID_...

Also the drive's firmware level might be relevant.

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COS
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I'm using dl360 g6 servers with P410i controllers with 1G bbwc.

Per hp docs.....

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.google.com_url-3Fq-3Dhttp-3A__www8.hp.com_h2...

Page 4 states 6g SAS but 3G SATA link speeds. Not many people know about this. I tested 2 SSD SATA 6G on my pc with RAID 0 and i get over 850MB transfer on an ATTO benchmark test. The same SSD's on the dl360 with P410i and 1G bbwc gets approx 440MB on the same ATTO test. That is consistant with the difference of 6G getting dumbed down to 3G and validates the hp documents claim.

This site indicates the lsi model to link at SATA 6G.....

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.storagereview.com_lsi-5Fmegaraid-5F92608i-5F...

I will try one of those controllers and test then post results.

Not many people know about this dumb down feature because most will buy sas drives. But for lab purposes, SAS SSD's are cost prohibitive hence our option to use SATA.

Thanks

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cykVM
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The P410i does not use an LSI chip, it's a PMC PM8011 RAID-on-Chip, see PM8011 SRC 8x6G 8-Port 6Gb/s SAS, PCIe Gen 2 RAID-on-Chip (RoC) Controller or HP Smart Array P410i | bob the building master

You may also try an IBM ServeRAID M5014/5015 or a DELL PERC H700 (or one out of this list: LSI SAS 2108 RAID Controller Information and ListingServeTheHome – Server and Workstation...) which also use a LSI SAS2108 chip, see http://www.lsi.com/products/raid-on-chip/pages/lsi-sas-2108.aspx

The ServeRAID/PERC might be available cheap(er) on Ebay (used/refurbished).

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