Raid Hardware on ESXi 5.0

[nirene]

Hi  everybody

My component are on ASUS Sabertooth x58 with:

CPU Intel Core i7 960
RAM 24Gb DDR3 1600
DISK OS: single WD3000HLHX SATAIII (300Gb-10K) on Marvell PCIe 9128 (88SE9128) [it would be in RAID1]
DISK DATA: four ST31000528AS SATAII (1Tb-7200) on Intel ICH10R in BIOS R5

Marvell is not supported by the OS and Intel is a "fake raid".:smileycry:

I'm finding two card that work one in sata2 Raid5 and one in sata3 Raid0 or 1.

At this moment I've find in this community, vm-help and other sites for an answare but nothing to do.

I haven't understood what I can do

Someone can help me please ?

Many thanks in advice

Alessandro

[a_p_]

Discussion moved from Community Website Help to VMware ESXi 5

[Dave_Mishchenko · Accepted solution]

A common option to use is an used Dell Perc 5 / 6.  These are LSI based controllers which will also provide controller / disk health within ESXi.   You can also look at LSI based controllers that have worked with ESXi 4.

[golddiggie]

1. Install ESXi 5 onto an USB flash drive that's 1-8GB in size. Go with a quality make/model, don't go cheap here.

2. Get a [true hardware] RAID controller with BBWC that's on the VMware HCL.

3. Setup the four 1TB drives in a RAID 10 array for better performance and redundancy.

IMO, anytime you start going down the whitebox route, you're going to run into issues. They might be easy to overcome, or a total PITA (like you're facing).

Personally, I made sure the system I purchased to run ESX/ESXi had 100% supported hardware before I even made the purchase. A Dell PERC 6/i controller and Intel NIC's were just part of the picture. Using a workstation class system (Precision Workstation T7400) that Dell engineers confirmed had what it took to run ESX/ESXi (back when 3.5 was still new) was another key part. Getting assistance from the manufacturer can go a long way. I doubt you'll get much luck from Asus on the board you're using.

[nirene]

Best regards !!

Very helpful yours answers, thank you so much !!

Alessandro  

[nirene]

Hi Dave

I've bought a Perc5/i but wasn't compatibility with my Asus MB (3/4 reboot, cat 8Gb ram on 24Gb).

Now I've returned this card, and LSI8704ELP would be better for my system.

What do you think about ?

Alessandro