Alternative to HPE Smart Array e208i-p

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lablab

New Member
Mar 22, 2022
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Hi everyone,

It's really hard to find this product : HPE Smart Array e208i-p (Link to HP Website)
Do you know of any alternative ?
What I need :
- 1 SFF port minimum
- Performance : capable of handling a raid 1 of sata SSD's.
- No cache

If you need some more information, I'll be glade to answer :)

I intend to put these in some HPE Microserver Gen10+
Thank you all

Have a nice day.
 

lablab

New Member
Mar 22, 2022
6
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1
Hi,

A few things left out.
The card needs to be avalaible brand new, I have twelve cards to buy.
It needs to be recognized under ESXi, so compatible with ESXi 7.0.

Otherwise, this card sounded great for my use.
If you have any other suggestions, I'll take them

Have a nice day
 

lablab

New Member
Mar 22, 2022
6
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Good to hear, I'll take a look deeper to find some.
There is six on amazon right now, I'll have to find an other supplier.

You are using it for VSAN but in which conditions ?
I'm asking because I'm not an expert and I'm a bit confuse sometimes.

The goal here is to build a RAID1 volume with two SSD and to install ESXi on it.
The space not taken by ESXi will act has the datastore for the few VMs.
The h240 will boot ESXi on UEFI or just on legacy ?

Thank you, for taking the time and answering my newbie question.
Best Regards,
 

Sogndal94

Senior IT Operations Engineer
Nov 7, 2016
114
72
28
Norway
vSan is vmwares software SAN (I would think if it like software raid setup over more than 1 node. But the storage is not stretched over the nodes), and is not relevant for your use case. You are looking for a raidcontroller, with cache onboard that is supported in ESXI. For that the P440 should work good. i would get a battery added aswell.

H240 can boot in UEFI mode to ESXI yes.
Dont ever feel like there is questions you cant ask(thats is how we learn) us on the forum, and i am more than happy to answer them if i know the answer.
Have a great day ahead.
 

lablab

New Member
Mar 22, 2022
6
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All right, found some P440, but damn, sas cables are not easy to find for this one.
I'll keep scroling :)

Thank you, have a great weekend.
 

Evan

Well-Known Member
Jan 6, 2016
3,346
598
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I have a H240 in a gen10+ microserver no issues, running Linux but got me wondering if putting in a p408i-p you use the battery from the blade system the 12w one ? Wonder if they run hot or how they would go in a microserver.
 

lablab

New Member
Mar 22, 2022
6
0
1
Hi guys,

Sorry, I was on a different topic these days.
Took the time to think about my problem though.

The way the cable is made inside, force me to select only raid card that have sff 8087 placed like a e208i-p.
The fact that I have to find one working on ESXi 7 is a pain.

So far, two option for me :
- Wait for the e208i-p to be available again (as today, the few available cost three times the normal price)
- Take some H240, but I need a clear answer from you guys. Will it support a RAID 1 with two Sata SSD and will I get enough performance ?

Thanks
Have a good evening
 

Sogndal94

Senior IT Operations Engineer
Nov 7, 2016
114
72
28
Norway
Hi guys,
- Take some H240, but I need a clear answer from you guys. Will it support a RAID 1 with two Sata SSD and will I get enough performance ?


Thanks
Have a good evening
It will support raid 1(i should work for that in esxi aswell)
performance will be as of about 1 ssd for write and i think as far as i remeber about 65-85% of both disks on read. Since sata is only up to 550MB/s thats what you should expect. I am not sure what preformance you should expect from it in raid mode in esxi(as i have never tried it. And it has no cache)
 

Evan

Well-Known Member
Jan 6, 2016
3,346
598
113
Never tried the H240 on ESX with raid but it performs exactly as expected when used with vSAN. Probably doesn’t give much insight really but if used in HBA mode it’s certainly an equal to the newer controllers for the most part but doesn’t support mixed more of course and I am sure even the newer economy raid controllers perform better that the H240 with raid.