Currently I am running a home server with an Asus Z11PA-U12/10G-2S. It has 8 disks connected to the onboard SATA controller.
I also have an old IBM M1015 lying around.
The server is running Red Hat 8.4 with ZFS and RHV virtualiation. ZFS is configured with 4 pairs of mirrors. I don't boot from ZFS, there's a dedicated SSD for OS and booting.
I am considering moving the hypervisor to ESX, this poses a problem. ESX does not support ZFS. I am not married to ZFS, but I do need redundancy so I do need some way of creating a logical volume that ESX can work with.
I tried the M1015. Flashed it back to IR mode with the BIOS but man, this makes me cringe and gnash my teeth in agony. It's like burning in hell. Its slow, tedious UI, boot time takes well over 5 minutes before it even jumps to "initializing". My attention span for watching "nothing happen" isn't 5 minutes, so half the time I miss the "PRESS THIS BUTTON TO CONFIGURE" and I need to reboot and sit through those >5 minutes again. It makes me want to break something. A keyboard, or some random object lying around on my desk ... anything. This controller is not an option for me to configuring a logical volume. Moreover, once I had this logical volume configured and activated it wasn't visible in RHEL. I didn't want to continue with >5 minutes delays during boot so I dumped that M1015 back in its corner. I can't handle that.
I do wonder whether I actually need the BIOS ... I don't boot from it so if I can create the logical volumes without that cringy BIOS interface and 5 minute delay... Linux didn't see the volume but if ESX will .. ? I don't know, any ideas?
So I wonder, would the onboard controller suffice? Back in the days I got burned by onboard RAID, is it still bad? The data on ZFS is important enough to make 4 mirrors instead of RAIDZ1 or 2, I make offsite backups and local backups. I do NOT want to loose some of that stuff so it has to be reliable. Not enterprise class or anything like that, but I don't want to go through a reboot or a BIOS upgrade one day and find my mirrors gone or corrupt, when nothing actually happened. Also, it needs to reliably sync a new disk when it got replaced. ZFS has never disappointed me (been using that since version 0.6.x and replaced quite a few disks over the years).
I don't mind spending some money on another controller. All it needs to do is RAID 0/1/10 and it needs to do it relatively fast (should match or exceed ZFS which admittedly isn't the fastest), and be reliable. No need for RAID-5 or 6.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions!
I also have an old IBM M1015 lying around.
The server is running Red Hat 8.4 with ZFS and RHV virtualiation. ZFS is configured with 4 pairs of mirrors. I don't boot from ZFS, there's a dedicated SSD for OS and booting.
I am considering moving the hypervisor to ESX, this poses a problem. ESX does not support ZFS. I am not married to ZFS, but I do need redundancy so I do need some way of creating a logical volume that ESX can work with.
I tried the M1015. Flashed it back to IR mode with the BIOS but man, this makes me cringe and gnash my teeth in agony. It's like burning in hell. Its slow, tedious UI, boot time takes well over 5 minutes before it even jumps to "initializing". My attention span for watching "nothing happen" isn't 5 minutes, so half the time I miss the "PRESS THIS BUTTON TO CONFIGURE" and I need to reboot and sit through those >5 minutes again. It makes me want to break something. A keyboard, or some random object lying around on my desk ... anything. This controller is not an option for me to configuring a logical volume. Moreover, once I had this logical volume configured and activated it wasn't visible in RHEL. I didn't want to continue with >5 minutes delays during boot so I dumped that M1015 back in its corner. I can't handle that.
I do wonder whether I actually need the BIOS ... I don't boot from it so if I can create the logical volumes without that cringy BIOS interface and 5 minute delay... Linux didn't see the volume but if ESX will .. ? I don't know, any ideas?
So I wonder, would the onboard controller suffice? Back in the days I got burned by onboard RAID, is it still bad? The data on ZFS is important enough to make 4 mirrors instead of RAIDZ1 or 2, I make offsite backups and local backups. I do NOT want to loose some of that stuff so it has to be reliable. Not enterprise class or anything like that, but I don't want to go through a reboot or a BIOS upgrade one day and find my mirrors gone or corrupt, when nothing actually happened. Also, it needs to reliably sync a new disk when it got replaced. ZFS has never disappointed me (been using that since version 0.6.x and replaced quite a few disks over the years).
I don't mind spending some money on another controller. All it needs to do is RAID 0/1/10 and it needs to do it relatively fast (should match or exceed ZFS which admittedly isn't the fastest), and be reliable. No need for RAID-5 or 6.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions!