So I purchased a Norco 4224 which has 24 hot swap drives. I have all 24 slots filled using 3x IBM M1015 HBAs. I also have a 4 port NIC.
I was running it on a chipset with only 16 PCIE lanes. I realized that I may be gimping my setup this way.
IBM M1015 - x8 PCIE
IBM M1015 - X8 PCIE
IBM...
So I was able to come across a Dell SAS HBA 5/E adapter along with a MD1000 array.
I've loaded it up with 8x 250gb 7200rpm and 6x 500gb 7200rpm sata drives.
I'm using the storage solely for an ISCSI datastore within ESXI 5.1.
My question is what is the best way to set up the array...