PCI RAID Controller

[Piotr Kirklewski]

Hi there
I need to pick up a PCI RAID controller for my home ESXi 4.1 server. My datastore consists of a single 1TB SATA drive at the moment. I recently experienced some performance issues and was advised on the VmWare forums to create a RAID array using hardware RAID with cashing capabilities. I can at the moment afford 3 x 1TB SATA and am looking for a RAID controller which would do the job and doesn't cost to much. Could anyone please point me to the right direction ?

Thanks

VmWare Forum:
http://communities.vmware.com/message/1747559#1747559

My motherboard manual:
http://www.eindustrialcomputers.com/ProductCart/pc/catalog/P7F_C4L_Manual.pdf

[Torsten.]

I don't think HP will support HP controllers in non-HP servers. This may work or not work.

But according to the manual you sent your servers board can do RAIDs (chapter 5)!

[Piotr Kirklewski]

Yes it can do RAID but it's software RAID only, which probably is not good enough for what I need to do.

[Torsten.]

I don't know anything about your system, but since you can set it up in BIOS (according to your manual) it must be hardware.

[Johan Guldmyr]

Hi,
Probably not powerful enough for your purpose? How bad is the software raid? Wouldn't an HP controller cost quite a bit?

You can get a list of the smart array cards here:
http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/proliantstorage/arraycontrollers/index.html

As far as I can see the E200 is the weakest one and just checked on one site and you can get it for maybe 120â ¬ or so.

HP do support SAS/SCSI controllers for running the HP tape libraries/drives with non-hp servers. I don't know about the raid controllers though.

[Piotr Kirklewski]

The motherboard supports the following SATA RAID solutions:
â ¢ Intel Matrix Storage Manager with RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 10, and RAID 5
support (for Windows OS only).
â ¢ LSI1068E PCI-E SAS controller (P7F-C/SAS model only) supports SAS disk
drives and RAID0, RAID1, and RAID1E configuration.
â ¢ LSI MegaRAID software RAID Configuration Utility (P7F-C/4L model only)
with RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 10 support (for both Linux and Windows OS).

Since my Motherboard is not P7F-C/SAS then it has only the software version I presume.
Am I wrong ?

My motherboard manual:
http://www.eindustrialcomputers.com/ProductCart/pc/catalog/P7F_C4L_Manual.pdf

[Johan Guldmyr]

You should have

â ¢ LSI MegaRAID software RAID Configuration Utility (P7F-C/4L model only)
with RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 10 support (for both Linux and Windows OS).

On the C4L board. The other one is a PCI e extra card while the last one appears to be integrated on the system board.

RAID 1E - cool.

[Piotr Kirklewski]

@ Johan Guldmyr
Thanks.
Those controllers are descrie for SAS drives that cost a fortune. Can I somehow cheat the controller and connect my SATA drives to it ?
Regards

[Johan Guldmyr]

SAS and SATA drives have the same connector. They are compatible.