Disk controller compatibility

[paulthornton]

Hi all

I'm trying to find a list of known good and supported HBAs (or RAID cards that do genuine JBOD passthrough) for vSAN.  The HCL isn't overly helpful here, as it steers you towards the ReadyNodes - and although I can go through each of these and work out which chipsets are on which cards, this could be prone to errors and you don't know what vendor-specific firmware changes there may be.

The wider picture here is that I'm speccing up a new 4 node ESXi/vSAN cluster, all flash, ideally based on Supermicro kit (we already use their servers with ESXi and have had no issues).

Supermicro's vSAN Readynode offerings don't quite tick all of the boxes for us, hence this exercise.  I'm very keen to keep to the supported spec as much as possible - this is relatively easy with things like processors, memory and drives but the controller is the vital missing link.

Thanks

Paul.

[GreatWhiteTec · Accepted solution]

Hi Paul,

Keep in mind that if a vSAN ReadyNode does not meet your specs, you are most likely able to tweak things that meets your requirements.

See What You Can (and Cannot) Change in a vSAN ReadyNode™ - Virtual Blocks

For SuperMicro, there seem to be 3 controller that support pass-through

SMC2308 - Hybrid

SMC3008 - All-Flash and Hybrid

SMC3108 - All-Flash

VMware Compatibility Guide - vsan

[paulthornton]

Thanks very much for this, exactly what I was after - I had somehow managed to miss that section of the HCL.

Paul.

[TheBobkin]

Hello Paul,

It is unfortunately not as apparently accessible:

https://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php?deviceCategory=vsan

Click "Build Your Own based on Certified Components."

Then you can sort by component, vendor etc.

There are also quicktools for reference such as this:

https://hcl.captain-vsan.com/

Bob