RAID card for ESXi server

[Jbiss]

Hi,

I am looking for advice on getting a RAID card for my ESXi 5.1 server. The motherboard is a Supermicro X9SCL-F in a 4U chassis. I would like to do a 4 SSD drive raid 10 for the datastore along with a mirrored raid for the OS (esxi 5.1). The RAID card would need to support 6Gb/s and have 8 ports available (currently only require 6 though).

I'm looking for something on the cheaper end, off eBay and able to ship to Canada. I've been looking into the HP P410 cards but would be curious if there are other recommendations.



Thanks!

 

[JimPhreak]

IBM ServeRAID M1015 sounds right up your alley.

 

[whitey]

Hi,

I am looking for advice on getting a RAID card for my ESXi 5.1 server. The motherboard is a Supermicro X9SCL-F in a 4U chassis. I would like to do a 4 SSD drive raid 10 for the datastore along with a mirrored raid for the OS (esxi 5.1). The RAID card would need to support 6Gb/s and have 8 ports available (currently only require 6 though).

I'm looking for something on the cheaper end, off eBay and able to ship to Canada. I've been looking into the HP P410 cards but would be curious if there are other recommendations.



Thanks!

Yep, any of the LSI 2008 (6Gbps variants). LSI 9211-8i, IBM M1015, Dell H200/H310's, etc. Rare part numbers (fujitsu and the like) can be had for $60-80 regularly. I have been picking up these for no more than $50 recently to scale out my vSAN cluster...just have to be patient.

 

[tigweld0101]

Third on the LSI 2008 or 2308

 

[kroem]

Looking at the same, but thought I "needed" a card with cache and BBU to get a fair performance? I'm looking to put SSD's in raid1 for Datastore.
Looking at 9260/9280 or 9265/9285... but might be overkill then?

 

[Rhinox]

Avoid raid-controller without cache if you want to use it for ESXi-datastore. ESXi does *not* do disk-caching, so controller without cache delivers trully terrible performance...

 

[canta]

Avoid raid-controller without cache if you want to use it for ESXi-datastore. ESXi does *not* do disk-caching, so controller without cache delivers trully terrible performance...

totally agree with that!.

just addition outside esxi,
proxmox is a full blown minimalist modified Debian (do disk caching as regular linux system by default) and work perfectly without non-bbu-raid(HBA.. SAS2008 variances) card.

the reason to go HBA CARD that support Raid-1 is cheap card with no worry on BBU(or expensive $$$ flash type) and saving power usage ~5W (depends on workload, the max during monitoring was ~9 W)*
only one is important to add: a good damn UPS . I would say, while VMs are running on proxmox and yanking the power cable would cause corruption on VMs :|...

* comparison between M1015 and M5014 on raid-1

 

[mrkrad]

I've found the m1015 non-megaraid controllers throw far more latency warnings with the same raid-1/0 config with esxi 5.1, might have to do with the available memory the megaraid controllers give to the driver or bios differences! I've got several 9260/m5014 with raid-1 using samsung 830/840pro/850pro in production that are 100% solid with esxi 5.1

 

[canta]

I am using m1015 with lsi9240 firmware for my raid 1 proxmox. 2 ssd and 2 WD black. All raided.

 

[kroem]

Ok, but what card to get for ESXI?

 

[canta]

Ok, but what card to get for ESXI?

your question is already answered in this thread. why don't read this thread ....

 

[kroem]

your question is already answered in this thread. why don't read this thread ....

The "answer" would be 9211? But it would have horrible performance without cache/BBU, so I don't really so that as a very good answer, right?

 

[gea]

LSI 9211/ M1015 or the newer LSI 9207 HBAs are perfect for the money.
But for raid-1/10 or 5/6 solutions there is a more serious problem with hardware raid adapters without cache/BBU

If your system crashes during a write there is a chance that you have updated data only on a half of the mirror. Without a checksum capable filesystem you are not even capable to detect the error/ decide which data is valid. (Raid write hole problem)

Your typical options are a hardware raid with BBU and cache like LSI 9260 and up.
Another option is a virtualized ZFS SAN with software raid, CopyOnWrite and checksums and a shared NFS datastore.

This gives you more performance as you can use mainboard RAM as cache, reliability and flexibility.
This works perfect with a pure HBA without cache and you must not care about the write hole problem due CopyOnWrite.

 

[canta]

The "answer" would be 9211? But it would have horrible performance without cache/BBU, so I don't really so that as a very good answer, right?

For esxi. Get real hardware raid with bbu or flash.

Since for simplicity and not very large vms total., forget to use shared media. Such as zfs or other software raid.

Either get 9260 OEM or newer with battery or flash. Make sure stick with raid 0/1 combination.

Sorry gea....no zfs for simple esxi solution.

Proxmox are more friendly with 9240 raid 1 since the OS cache much. Just one warning as I stated before.

9240 is the best on Linux raid 1... Than 9211ir.
But.. 9240 supports only 35 qd. 9211 is 600( which good for vsan)

 

[Jbiss]

Following all the suggestions and information in the thread, I ended up getting an IBM M5015 with the built-in cache and a battery backup for 120$. I'm hoping having the cache will reduce any chances of latency to the RAID 10 on the ESXi server. Thanks for the information!

 

[kroem]

I got a M5016 because of CV (I think...)