Does vSphere 6.0 work with SuperMicro motherboard RAID?

[morty]

I'm looking to do a cheap vSphere homelab build ($3000 or less) and I can obviously save a lot of money if I don't buy a RAID card. I'm just wondering does vSphere 6.0 see (drivers) SuperMicro motherboard RAID if I just get 4 WD Black drives and throw them in RAID-10 on the motherboard?

 

[PigLover]

Depends what you mean by "SuperMicro Motherboard Raid".

If you are referring to the Intel Raid built into their SATA controller - no. ESXi does not support Intel raid.

If you are referring to the LSI-based raid build onto some motherboards with LSI SAS controllers then yes, it should support it.

 

[Jeggs101]

Adding on @PigLover's 100% right point - you can do RAID 10 for those drives on a LSI sas 2008 card which can be had for under $100 these days off eBay.

 

[morty]

Skipping eBay, what would you buy off newegg.ca that supports 4x 1TB Sata WD Black drives in a RAID-10 config and vSphere 6.0 compatible?

This is the mobo I'm looking at: SUPERMICRO MBD-X10DRL-I ATX Server Motherboard Dual LGA 2011 R3 Intel C612 - Newegg.ca

 

[whitey]

Skipping eBay, what would you buy off newegg.ca that supports 4x 1TB Sata WD Black drives in a RAID-10 config and vSphere 6.0 compatible?

This is the mobo I'm looking at: SUPERMICRO MBD-X10DRL-I ATX Server Motherboard Dual LGA 2011 R3 Intel C612 - Newegg.ca

Plenty of PCI-e lanes on that thing for HBA/RAID ctrl addon's and NIC's. If $ is not an issue then go new but I would certainly shop the ebay market (LSI 2008 HBA's can be had for $50-60) have not paid more than that for 9211-8i's, M1015's, H200's, H310's in over 6 months and have a least a 1/2 a dozen of them and some spares sitting on the parts shelf along w/ some SAS expanders.

Better yet pick a SM mobo w/ the HBA on it and that meets your CPU/mem requirements...better yet pick on that also has 10G LOM. I'm not a SM ninja but I'm sure someone here can point you in the right direction.

 

[Fred Flinstone]

Plenty of PCI-e lanes on that thing for HBA/RAID ctrl addon's and NIC's. If $ is not an issue then go new but I would certainly shop the ebay market (LSI 2008 HBA's can be had for $50-60) have not paid more than that for 9211-8i's, M1015's, H200's, H310's in over 6 months and have a least a 1/2 a dozen of them and some spares sitting on the parts shelf along w/ some SAS expanders.

Better yet pick a SM mobo w/ the HBA on it and that meets your CPU/mem requirements...better yet pick on that also has 10G LOM. I'm not a SM ninja but I'm sure someone here can point you in the right direction.

This would seem to fit the bill as an all in one motherboard with built in LSI hardware RAID controller and Dual 10GigE ports:

SuperMicro X10DRL-CT

Supermicro | Products | Motherboards | Xeon® Boards | X10DRL-CT