I'm looking for a little advice.
I'm upgrading an existing Norco 4220 platform with a new (to me) SuperMicro X9DR7-LN4F with 2 x E5-2670 (SR0KX) CPU's + 128GB DDR3 EEC.
This existing platform I'm upgrading includes an Adaptec RAID 52445 28 port 512MB SAS RAID controller and 20 2TB 7200RPM SATA drives. The 52445 is only a 3G SAS controller. I'd like to use this card/spinners. I'd rather add additional storage to other machines rather than spend more money on this box's HBA - unless I need to.
The purpose of this box will be an ESXi platform with about 10-15 VM's and lot's of storage. Nothing hugely critical or high traffic.
I do have a 10Gb LAN.
I plan on booting the Hypervisor from an SATA SSD via the onboard sata controller.
I will have a primary VM boot from the same SSD and pass the Adaptec through to it so I can mount all 20 drives in a ZFS array. I will pass this ZFS array back to the ESXi host via NFS for storage of the remaining VM's (delayed boot).
My primary question is should I consider replacing the Adaptec card with something different?
My secondary question is hould I consider an entire different receipe?
Thanks for the input,
I'm upgrading an existing Norco 4220 platform with a new (to me) SuperMicro X9DR7-LN4F with 2 x E5-2670 (SR0KX) CPU's + 128GB DDR3 EEC.
This existing platform I'm upgrading includes an Adaptec RAID 52445 28 port 512MB SAS RAID controller and 20 2TB 7200RPM SATA drives. The 52445 is only a 3G SAS controller. I'd like to use this card/spinners. I'd rather add additional storage to other machines rather than spend more money on this box's HBA - unless I need to.
The purpose of this box will be an ESXi platform with about 10-15 VM's and lot's of storage. Nothing hugely critical or high traffic.
I do have a 10Gb LAN.
I plan on booting the Hypervisor from an SATA SSD via the onboard sata controller.
I will have a primary VM boot from the same SSD and pass the Adaptec through to it so I can mount all 20 drives in a ZFS array. I will pass this ZFS array back to the ESXi host via NFS for storage of the remaining VM's (delayed boot).
My primary question is should I consider replacing the Adaptec card with something different?
My secondary question is hould I consider an entire different receipe?
Thanks for the input,