IBM M1015 Controller on ESXi for RAID capability

[stealth210]

Hi all,

I'm wondering if I'm going down the right path here. I've already ordered the hardware, but it seems most people are using the M1015 (LSA-9240-8i) with the intent of a simple SATA3/SAS2 JBOD controller. I'm after reliability with file storage, etc, so I want to have multiple RAID 1 setups on the controller. Should I flash it to the "IR" mode?

Specs are:
i5-4670k on Z87 chipset board (ASUS Z87M-Plus)
1x Intel e1000 PT on PCI express
2x 3TB Seagate SATA 3 for file storage RAID 1
2x 1TB Fujitsu Spinpoint older for other VM guests RAID 1
2x 32GB SSD RAID 0
1x 120GB SSD JBOD/standalone

I thought I had it clear on what I wanted, but all the firmware flashing of this card makes me unsure. Should I leave it alone or flash with another load? IT seems to mean no RAID ability, right?

Thanks

 

[mrkrad]

IR mode will suck without the cache to handle write-back mode! It is definitely unstable with ESXi !

It is best used in IT mode which is software raid (ZFS)

 

[stealth210]

I see. I was hoping to run hardware RAID as I specifically wanted to hand that off to ESXi for splitting amongst the guests. Otherwise, it seems a waste to use the M1015 as a straight through SATA adapter since the Z87 board has 6 channels of SATA3 on board already.

So, the M1015 sucks at doing RAID 1 at a decent performance?

Keep in mind, I'm not doing a 24 drive NAS, but just want reliable storage with a handful of drives.

 

[mobilenvidia]

RAID1 is Simplest RAID of all, just duplicate data to 2x drives, no cache needed, but would help writes if it was there.
So the m1015 will do this just fine.

IR mode is probably best, but native M1015/LSI9240 should also work.
esxi stability find this out for your self