Ideal Hardware RAID 1/10 Card for ESXi Datastore

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TheBay

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Feb 25, 2013
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What's the cheapest ideal RAID 1/10 card for using on SSD's or Spinners for an ESXi datastore?

Obviously there are SAS2008 based card's out there, but they lack cache and people have caught on to them so are also pricey for what they are.

Any ideas suggestions?, BBU not required as server is on a UPS.
 

hagak

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Oct 22, 2012
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Any ideas suggestions?, BBU not required as server is on a UPS.
Please note that BBU protects against failures that a UPS can not protect against. PSU failure for one, also the better cards will flush the cache in the event of a system crash as well. Neither of these do you get from a UPS.
 

dba

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Feb 20, 2012
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My favorites for low-cost, moderate performance: IBM M1015 flashed to LSI (still a deal at $100) and IBM M5014 ($150 with BBU). There might be lower cost units available, but not low enough to be worth the trouble.

What's the cheapest ideal RAID 1/10 card for using on SSD's or Spinners for an ESXi datastore?

Obviously there are SAS2008 based card's out there, but they lack cache and people have caught on to them so are also pricey for what they are.

Any ideas suggestions?, BBU not required as server is on a UPS.
 

zer0sum

Well-Known Member
Mar 8, 2013
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Awww...I think the dell cards are worth it when they cost very little and come with battery backup and cache.
Maybe not if you are going for really high performance, but they are cheap and cheerful in my experience :D

PERC 5i
  • Intel IOP333 Processor (11w TDP, 110Tj(max))
  • 256MB 400MHz ECC Registered DDR2 memory (upgradable*)
  • RAID levels 0, 1, 5, 10, and 50
  • PCIe x8
  • 2 (SFF-8484) SAS internal connectors (support for 8 drives)
  • LSI Manufactured (and flashable)
  • Xp, Vista 32/64 Supported
  • Does not support Native Command Queuing
  • Does not support 3TB+ drives

PERC 6/i
  • LSI SAS1078 RAID on Chip (ROC) 500MHz
  • Operational Temperature: 50C
  • Onboard 256MB of ECC Registered 667MHz DDR2 3-5-5-5
  • RAID levels 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, and 60
  • PCIe x8
  • 2 (SFF-8484) SAS internal connectors (support for 8 drives) *Does not support SATA 1.5Gb/s
  • LSI Manufactured
  • Xp, Vista 32/64 Supported
  • Supports Native Command Queuing
  • Does not support 3TB+ drives
 

TheBay

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Feb 25, 2013
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Please note that BBU protects against failures that a UPS can not protect against. PSU failure for one, also the better cards will flush the cache in the event of a system crash as well. Neither of these do you get from a UPS.
Cheers for that, but I am aware of this, I have both dual and quad redundant psu chassis. And a 6u 6000kva ups :)
Flushing cache is a good point. Bbu's are expensive and if you get them on the cheap they are usually passed their sell by date. Capacitor based cards are better but more expensive.

Percs look a good option, but will be going over to 4 Samsung 830 or 840 pro before long and want to get the most out of them. Maybe I could get one as a stop gap.

Or would I be better off getting a m1015 for zfs and using my lsi2308 in IR mode?
 
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mrkrad

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Oct 13, 2012
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the m5014 will execute a sleep mode during controller shutdown. So if you shutdown properly it will inform the drives that the power is going out and to prepare for it.

You can get these cool 1 sata female to 4 male with capacitors power extenders.

Most server power supplies are designed to handle quite a bit of flux and not die instantly (ie hp redundant power supplies can sustain 1 second of power brownout without a ups plugged up).

Perc 5 or 6 are junk - the H700 is fastpath enabled device (always) so it is the best low end card. the 1GB NVRAM has cachecade 1 but they left fastpath enabled on the 512meg battery ones i've all received.

google esxi 5.1 m1015 or 9211 and you'll see unresolved threads of i/o resets and bus resets. These do not occur with the megaraid higher line with more ram/cache - even though fastpath and direct i/o are basically bypassing that , i think it has to do with the driver itself and the amount of ram it has to run on the card.
 

TheBay

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Feb 25, 2013
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Been thinking about this, if I go an AIO route, would it be better to just use a small SSD for the ZFS OS and run the ESXi datastore off the ZFS pool, or run a few SSD's for the ESXi datastore.

What would be the best practice.

Also would speed matter of said SSD as I have a ASUS mSATA 16gb MLC kicking around with a sata adaptor, but it's not the best at read/write speeds, do any of the ZFS OS's get loaded in to RAM?

Will save me getting another RAID/HBA
 

mrkrad

Well-Known Member
Oct 13, 2012
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Google the controller say "9211 esxi 5.1" and note how many people are having issues with their datastore going offline.

One might use the basis of complaints as a method of fielding out obvious poor decisions (regardless of whose fault it might be).

You being a HP professional would definitely know that the B320i would be a VERY potent fast raid-1/10 solution (b120i too) for ESXi.

Go grab a demo dl380e and let us know how that isht works!

B320i and B120i are basically motheboard port sata/sas - with ESXi HPVSA software raid driver - designed for putting cheap SSD as fast as possible without racking up $600 raid card bills.

The only sad part is it is not a card, it only comes on the motherboard of lower end servers lol.

I'd buy one in a heartbeat! I know the b320i/b120i would be the superior SSD raid 1/10 ESXi card. It may even support trim/scsi-unmap! (or not).

So HP dude, what are your thoughts. go read the quick specs and get back to me!
 
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TheBay

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Feb 25, 2013
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Google the controller say "9211 esxi 5.1" and note how many people are having issues with their datastore going offline.

One might use the basis of complaints as a method of fielding out obvious poor decisions (regardless of whose fault it might be).

You being a HP professional would definitely know that the B320i would be a VERY potent fast raid-1/10 solution (b120i too) for ESXi.

Go grab a demo dl380e and let us know how that isht works!

B320i and B120i are basically motheboard port sata/sas - with ESXi HPVSA software raid driver - designed for putting cheap SSD as fast as possible without racking up $600 raid card bills.

The only sad part is it is not a card, it only comes on the motherboard of lower end servers lol.

I'd buy one in a heartbeat! I know the b320i/b120i would be the superior SSD raid 1/10 ESXi card. It may even support trim/scsi-unmap! (or not).

So HP dude, what are your thoughts. go read the quick specs and get back to me!
As much as i'd love a DL series, I've been down that route before and are not suitable for my home environment, I've had a DL360 G7 here with a full SAS array with hardware controllers, they are just too noisy and I didn't want to go down a proprietary route. Not to mention licencing nonsense with iLO!

Also my box pulls 75watt max from the mains when it's ldling, is silent and bloody quick, E3 series is ideal for home use for me and don't want to go down the E5 route. For my business that's another story :)
 
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mrkrad

Well-Known Member
Oct 13, 2012
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no kidding my dl360G6 with e5620 and 8 256 ssd pulls 99 watts idling with redundant 460's (99 watts @ 124VAC) according to kill-a-watts, 72gb of ram,9260-8i with fastpath/cc hardware key, nc360t . I'll say its noisy but the power that 1U packs is quite tremendous.

ILO licensing? come on man..
 

TheBay

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Feb 25, 2013
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no kidding my dl360G6 with e5620 and 8 256 ssd pulls 99 watts idling with redundant 460's (99 watts @ 124VAC) according to kill-a-watts, 72gb of ram,9260-8i with fastpath/cc hardware key, nc360t . I'll say its noisy but the power that 1U packs is quite tremendous.

ILO licensing? come on man..
Yeah they are cracking 1U units, I had a fully loaded G7 as stated but with full SAS array not SSD, will check what my main box is pulling with a kill-a-watt as I'm just going by what my 5u UPS is reading and when I powered off the server today it's still showing a 4.3% load so my guess was way off!

Noise is an issue here as it's just a 4 bedroom house and the smallest bedroom is the "Server" room, I also have to work in there too so don't want lots of noise annoying me.

As much as I'm tempted to get another HP box, as I'm now self employed I can't just "Loan" things any more and I cannot justify buying another box as this E3 build is only a few weeks old and I'm really happy with it's performance for home use.

I did put 2x HP enterprise drives in yesterday and put OI + Napp-it, with the LSI2308 passed through running the 5K3000's and runs really well.

I'll put the 2xHP drives and 5K3000's on the LSI2308 and run 2 pools, ZFS datastore and ZFS storage, with a SSD on the mainboard hosting Solaris/Napp-it

Also, with the HP server you mentioned earlier on, would that not be another chicken and egg situation with ESXi as it's software RAID and would need an OS to utilise even a mirror, so would need to use a card in that instance anyway.

Well I can't get iLO for free any more, I'm all out of licences unless I speak to someone in my old job who would let me have some for "evaluation" purposes lol