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- Aug 4, 2004
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This is most definitely not an area that I've got a lot of knowledge in, so I'm looking for some advice 
I need a PCIe RAID card that is supported by VMWare... and doesn't cost an arm and a leg 4 ports should be enough. Basically I just need it to house the VMs for my home test lab. I'm thinking 4 drives (any recommendations on those would be helpful also) will suffice for the OS drives, data will be stored on other drives (using RDM). For performance, I guess RAID 10 would be the best option. Using 4 500GB drives in RAID10 for example should give me plenty of space for the VMs I would need to run (heck, 4 250GB drives would probably be enough even).
My other option is to set up an OpenFiler box using an old Intel E6400 and Asus P5B Deluxe (using the onboard ICH8R). This would give me more options for migrating VMs, but at the same time defeats my primary focus of consolidating and reducing all the hardware taking up space and power in my home office
At the moment I only have one "planned" ESX host, but I'm toying with the idea of keeping my old server around for a second ESX host, or possibly selling it off and using the funds to help purchase an i5/i7 secondary host. So for now, all I really need is a 4-port card, but looking further in the future a shared storage solution would be more useful....
I need a PCIe RAID card that is supported by VMWare... and doesn't cost an arm and a leg
4 ports should be enough. Basically I just need it to house the VMs for my home test lab. I'm thinking 4 drives (any recommendations on those would be helpful also) will suffice for the OS drives, data will be stored on other drives (using RDM). For performance, I guess RAID 10 would be the best option. Using 4 500GB drives in RAID10 for example should give me plenty of space for the VMs I would need to run (heck, 4 250GB drives would probably be enough even).My other option is to set up an OpenFiler box using an old Intel E6400 and Asus P5B Deluxe (using the onboard ICH8R). This would give me more options for migrating VMs, but at the same time defeats my primary focus of consolidating and reducing all the hardware taking up space and power in my home office
At the moment I only have one "planned" ESX host, but I'm toying with the idea of keeping my old server around for a second ESX host, or possibly selling it off and using the funds to help purchase an i5/i7 secondary host. So for now, all I really need is a 4-port card, but looking further in the future a shared storage solution would be more useful....