cj0r

I wasn't aware that there was talk of one? Hence the "final" label on it.

I can confirm this, it only occurs for me with the .plg package though, manually installing the .tgz works fine.

Lol, I'm going to hold out a day or 2 before I jump onto either of the new 5.0's. I have enough floating through my mind with the east coast hurricane (less than a mile from the beach in NJ) .

I agree this was a no brainer, unRaid running as a VM is the way to go. Any decent hardware running "underneath" unRaid would be wasted if it was reversed. Your VM's would massively suffer. It has already been proven by several members (including myself) that building a reliable ESXi based server is rather easy to do. It doesn't have to be expensive either. Mine has been up and running since Spring and I haven't had any issues that I can think of.

I found some typos/room for confusion in your instructions and made the fixes below. I haven't done a proper test yet but the script functionality seems to work fine. I just need to test whether the UPS will actually send out the right commands to initiate the entire process (which it looks like it will).

Passthrough is actually discussed somewhere throughout this thread... it's just buried lol. I think most of us are using passthrough at this point since yes RDM is a pain in the butt haha. I currently have a BR10i and M1015 passed through to my unRaid VM and they are running just swimmingly!

Yes beware if you end up getting an actual RAID controller for your ESXi datastore needs. I have a RAID 10 array hosting mine (LSI 9212-4i4e) and writes are fairly abysmal due to the absence of a BBU which would give the tasty benefit of proper write caching. I didn't realize this until I was chest deep in my build and swimming in VM's, questioning why the I/O speeds weren't what I was expecting (don't get me wrong, reads are wonderful, but the slow write speeds seems to be hurting me). I took a gamble and manually enabled write caching on the controller using resources such as this, http://communities.vmware.com/message/1302854#1302854 http://www.virtualistic.nl/archives/526, but writes are still pretty pathetic considering how fast the reads are. How good is your performance with just the SSD's? I've been considering picking up one just to house the primary VM's and using the RAID 10 for secondary VM's, storage and additional backing up of the SSD.

My freshly flashed M1015 has now been successfully assimilated into my unRaid VM (ESXi). So far I can see nothing wrong with this card, I wish I had 2x 3TB drives to test on it right now.

Successfully flashed my M1015, thanks for the extra effort madburg!

Heh yes indeed, I snagged it right before I placed my reply.

Thanks bjp, I've been meaning to pick one up to switch out with one of my BR10i's. Figured I'd buy one now since I should be switching over to 3TB drives with my next drive purchase.

There's no need for a plugin, you just use the MePo web browser to accomplish this. No need to over complicate things.

Notice the wording, "Note: This PCI-Express x16 slot only supports x4 bandwidth and is intended only for use by a graphics card," which essentially means that they do not support/test whether or not a nonGPU will work in the slot. It might work, it might not... it's up to you to try and then report back to us whether it does . There have definitely been motherboards in the past that users have tried to use only to find that they couldn't utilize the PCI-E x16 for a storage controller... AKA this issue is not unheard of.

Wouldn't any performance gains be neglected due to the parity drive... at least with writes?

I say throw it on eBay for a price that you would be ok with (30 day relister), but in the meantime use it. That is some very power hungry hardware and you'd be wasting a lot of electrical costs running it 24/7 not to mention it probably generates a lot of heat too. The way I see it getting back ANY money for something is better than getting back nothing. Throw it up there and forget about it until it sells... in the meantime start planning out a proper 24/7 build.

#1, slow down, stop doing things until someone figures out what is going on.

It should be ADMIN/ADMIN I believe.

Heh Jumario I suggest you actually read through the thread... seems like you haven't even read the OP lol.

Well for one, that LSI card will work with ESXi unlike the Supermicro . A proper alternative/comparable card would be the $50-100 BR10i's that everyone has been buying up. However, it isn't clear whether or not the BR10i will receive proper firmware to support 3TB drives. As for the 6GB/s vs 3GB/s speed difference... that shouldn't really matter with mechanical drives but I'm not sure if that would affect how much the Expander would comfortably scale (I have 0 experience with them and don't feel like researching right now). Are you sure it's the card that is hampering your performance and not the drives/unraid itself?

Nope it should be safe for you to move over into a virtualized setup once you know everything is ready (test test test before commiting). I moved my physical production machine into a VM about 5 weeks ago, no issues whatsoever yet.

Yes indeed that's what we're talking about! http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=13272.0 - here's a build similar to mine (but far more advanced hardware-wise) http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=7914.0 - here's the thread that started this madness. I highly recommend using the passthrough methods described in the thread rather than RAW mapping. Also use plop to boot into unRaid. The BR10i controllers can be bought for $50 from eBay with bracket from here (http://cgi.ebay.com/IBM-ServeRAID-BR10i-SAS-SATA-Controller-w-Optnl-Bracket-/270748220946) which 100% works with the latest unRaid confirmed by myself and others. And as has already been discussed, VPN access is a dream with a proper router and software.

ESXi has solved all my server requirements (best of all the worlds). I still owe everyone a write up of my build....

Let's give "Limetech" 2 months to reply to this query. If they don't reply within that timeframe, we should consider the product "Abandonware" and do what the hell we want with it. I say this as a purchaser of two Pro licenses that I use myself and do not share. Seriously, the official "support" on this product is a fucking joke. Have you actually had an issue that required "official support"? Have you directly emailed lime-tech with an official problem where you needed it rectified? Even if you were kidding your outburst was unknowledgable and uncalled for. Items posted in a forum are not acceptable as support requests... do you know how many posts happen here per day? Why do you think moderators were created.

Hmm mine worked right off the bat. All I had to do was go into the advanced menu, set the default to USB (changed the timeout in the process to 1 sec) and then I was done. It boots right into unRaid after the slight delay, but the actual boot process takes a bit longer because as you said it is using 1.1. Small trade off for being able to direclty edit my unRaid install and have it stick .

Already have the plop method going, thanks for reminding me about it. I must have read about it before in the thread but have completely forgotten about it or just plain ignored it altogether. 1 thing I've noticed is how much slower it is to boot with compared to a straight vmdk, is this behavior to be expected or is something wrong with how I set it up?