Cheap SATA III PCI-E card for ESXi 5

HalfJawElite

Weaksauce
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Jul 2, 2012
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Hey all,

Just wondering if I could get some suggestions for 1 or 2 port SATA III cards for an ESXi 5 host I have. The card doesn't have to support RAID or even JBOD for that matter, just standard drive connection, detection and read/write operation. If possible and its guaranteed to work in ESXi I might also look at installing a second one in a Hyper-V 2012 host I have, given that its supported there too.

I wasn't sure if this should have been posted in either the computer hardware section or not so I posted here given its relevance to ESXi/Hyper-V compatibility.
 
Basically anything made by LSI. I use an IBM ServeRAID M1015 flashed to LSI firmware. Many others use the same here. I'm using the LSI 9240-8i firmware, but some people flash it to other firmware (9211 I believe). Should be able to score one for <$100 on Ebay. The cables are available on Monoprice for cheap. Often LSI cards on Ebay do not come with the card bracket, unfortunately. And many of the people selling those separately are overcharging at $15ish. When I buy a card without it (for cheap), I just use a slotted card bracket and zip tie the card to it. I'm not willing to pay more than $2 for that cheap piece of metal and I find it insulting that I should have to buy the card in pieces like that. But otherwise they are good cards. Note that some don't support RAID-5 or 6 (I don't think the M1015 does, actually) but that's not an issue for me either.

There are other affordable LSI cards available on Ebay and elsewhere. I do recommend sticking to 6Gbps cards, as the 3Gbps LSI cards don't support >2TB drives(/arrays?). M1015 may or may not be the cheapest available at any given time. Deals vary somewhat.

As for ruling used stuff out, not sure what's available or what you really consider cheap...
 
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If you're looking for cheap then I can recommend a ASMedia 1061-based card.
I've got one and it works fine with ESXi 5.1, even in pass-through mode if your setup supports that.
Can be bought for $13: http://www.ebay.com/itm/271014212322?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649
Or $17 shipped from the US if you're based there:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/SATA3-HD-su...sk_Controllers_RAID_Cards&hash=item5d389453e4

I have heard of ASmedia before but have never used any of their products before. The expansion card I require also needs to be INTERNAL, not EXTERNAL. I'll be attaching a Corsair Force 3 GT solid state drive and a DVD RW drive to this card, as long as its supported by Server 2012.
 
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I use a HighPoint Rocket 620 that came "free" with my hard drive. It works fine within the host VM (Server 2008R2). However, when i use it in ESXi as a datastore it always fails with errors when I try to copy files to it using vsphere.
 
I use a HighPoint Rocket 620 that came "free" with my hard drive. It works fine within the host VM (Server 2008R2). However, when i use it in ESXi as a datastore it always fails with errors when I try to copy files to it using vsphere.

What drives are you using with this card?
 
The generic SI3124 SATA headers run fine in ESXi. There are a ton of PCI-E cards based of that chipset.
 
What drives are you using with this card?

I use it most of the time with 1TB WD Green Drives. I've tried it with a 60GB 2.5" Hitachi Laptop drive as a temporary ESXi datastore to backup my vmdk files. vSphere kept failing mid copy. When I moved my hard drive to on board sata, it ran without problems. (vSphere is pretty finicky, so it could be a false positive)

However, the card runs fine within my guest VM's using rdm physical pass through. I got the same performance within the VM as i did natively.
 
I have heard of ASmedia before but have never used any of their products before. The expansion card I require also needs to be INTERNAL, not EXTERNAL. I'll be attaching a Corsair Force 3 GT solid state drive and a DVD RW drive to this card, as long as its supported by Server 2012.

There are both internal and external versions, I have the card with two internal ports.
Some cards have two internal and two external but only two ports will work at the same time I think. Check ASmedia 1061 on eBay and I'm sure you'll find cards with internal ports.
For example this one:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/271014212322?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649
I've got that one and it has two internal ports and no external ports.
 
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There are both internal and external versions, I have the card with two internal ports.
Some cards have two internal and two external but only two ports will work at the same time I think. Check ASmedia 1061 on eBay and I'm sure you'll find cards with internal ports.
For example this one:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/271014212322?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649
I've got that one and it has two internal ports and no external ports.

Can you confirm what the exact performance is on the internal port cards? I need to run a single Corsair Force 3 GT and a DVD burner on it and was worried about the card giving the SSD decreased performance. I know the SSD is a SATA 3 interface and the card states it is SATA 3 but can it hold the sustained read/write speeds for that specific SSD?
 
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Can you confirm what the exact performance is on the internal port cards? I need to run a single Corsair Force 3 GT and a DVD burner on it and was worried about the card giving the SSD decreased performance. I know the SSD is a SATA 3 interface and the card states it is SATA 3 but can it hold the sustained read/write speeds for that specific SSD?

I'm using it with a Kingston SSDNow V+200 (SF-2281) 60GB:

Code:
# hdparm -tT /dev/sdb1

/dev/sdb1:
 Timing cached reads:   22586 MB in  2.00 seconds = 11302.81 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads: 500 MB in  3.00 seconds = 166.43 MB/sec
If it will fit your needs, I don't know. It's cheap and fulfill my needs: As a pass through controller to a Linux guest.
It's SATA 3 compared to the SiL3124 which was mentioned below and a lot cheaper than the IBM M1015. At $13 you could just give it a try and see what you think about it. Worst case, put it in your Windows server or workstation.
 
The ASM106x no longer works in ESXi 5.5, not too many options for ESXi-compatbile cheap SATA3 2-port HBAs left
 
You could get a LSI 1068-E (BR10i) isnt SATA-3 but you can get it cheap and flash it with IT firmware and get a supported card...
 
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