ESXi 5 - cheap raid 5 card

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ripken204

[H]ard|Gawd
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we are building an ESXi server at work to play around with and eventually turn it into a development server.

I just remembered that onboard raid most likely won't.
For now there will be either 3 or 4 2TB drives, RAID5

It will be used only for datastores, ESXi will be installed on a flash drive.
high performance is not a requirement, there are just a few of us in the office.

the M1015 is recommended a lot but the base model doesn't look like it supports raid5?
any recommendations for which controller to purchase?
 
good news, my boss is willing to pay a little more
going with the 9211-8i, we might go raid10 instead of raid5
 
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We should get a sticky going for lab gear, especially for a range of ESXi raid cards.

Something like a couple options for raid 0,1,10 cards, then 0,1,5... in a variety of price ranges. I know this info can be found elsewhere with a little research, but this would be a great tool for people that start here first.

It may or may not be worth also suggesting switch gear in the thread too.
 
Dell Perc H200 is the successor to SAS ir/6. Supports Raid 10, very basic card but it'll handle your needs probably.
 
tgs said:
Dell Perc H200 is the successor to SAS ir/6. Supports Raid 10, very basic card but it'll handle your needs probably.
Click to expand...

Dell Perc H200 and 9211-8i are effectively the same card. Actually it is closer to the 9240-8i with the 9240s raid-5 support disabled (LSI lists this as a 9210-8i in some of their literature even though that product was never sold outside OEM outlets). Software is identical - in fact, you can flash the H200 with the LSI 9211 firmware if you want it to "look" closer to the real thing.

IBM M1015 is essentially the same card.

Go with whichever you can get cheaper.
 
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