pjneder

Here is a handy site that tells you that stuff. http://ark.intel.com/search/advanced/?s=t&FamilyText=Intel%C2%AE%20Core%E2%84%A22%20Quad%20Desktop%20Processor&VTD=true That's what I used when hunting for a Core i3/5/7 that would do what I needed.

Thanks jangjong! I will consider this strongly and possibly go for the M1015. I was restricted to x4, but now I will use a different mobo, so x8 cards are an option again. Thanks!

Can someone comment on the performance gain or not between the M1015 and SASLP-MV8 controllers? The M1015 use x8 PCIx and a faster chip which allows for SATAIII ratings. However, with 7200rpm HDD's are going to see a big difference? Thanks!

Thanks mrow and helmonder for the votes of confidence. I have 1 on the way from Newegg along with the cables. Sometime next week I'll have my VT-d capable i5 cpu, the card, cables and new drives. I'll be able to start benching and testing then! Quite excited to get this going. Thanks!

Beta, have you or anyone seen the SASLP-MV8 working on ESXi. Some googling around seems to indicate that it is not well supported on ESXi 5.1. I noticed that your Orion build was originally going to have the MV8. For me, I need something that is x4 PCI-X. The mobo I have and want to use does not have an x8 slot. Thanks.

Here's a question for you guys. For anyone having built a VM unraid, have you migrated disks from one working array into the VM on passthrough interfaces? I've got several steps I will need to accomplish and I'm trying to sort out which way I proceed. These are not in order yet: [*]Make an unraid 5.0 based VM [*]migrate from an AMD based HW w/ 6 disks, plus license to VM on different HW with passthrough controller [*]upgrade the parity disk and at least 1 storage disk to 3TB WD Reds [*]re-structure my shares to remove the split-level stuff I was doing which has become a real PITA From a previous post, I ordered a used i5-3470S which has VT-d. On my DQ77KB it will work fine. I will probably add a SASLP-MV8, but I'm not sure if that comes in phase 1 or phase 2. Hints? Thanks.

I'm all cleared up now. A bit sad because I didn't do all of the research I needed to do last fall, but I know what the deal is now. For clarification, the old P5Q and Q6600 were purely test rig parts. I'm trying to lower my machine count and lower the operating costs. Which is why I don't want 24x7 spinning disks. I'm not worried about the disks failing nearly as much as the power/heat/noise component. I have some pieces in place, but not the whole build for what I want to do. The board I got for my router, with thoughts of eventually going virtualized will work fine. It is a DQ77KB mini-itx. VT-d will work fine on that chipset http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/sb/CS-030922.htm?wapkw=%28vt-d%29 Of course I screwed up when I put the i3-3225 on there as it does NOT support VT-d. Sigh... :'( That board with a SLSVP-MV8 would be great for the virtualization needs I imagine. However, this is now turning into an expensive project. I think I'll keep the boxes separate for a while longer as I contemplate what I want to do. Thanks for all the great info on this thread!

Lots of good info here, except that it's not what I want to hear... I really want to consolidate my pfSense router, unraid, and then maybe VM a few other handy things. I guess maybe I didn't plan well enough when I was spec'ing my router box. It is based on an Intel DQ77 board with an i3. Way overkill for pfSense, but I was thinking about future needs. I'm going to look more into the cards you mentioned. Actually, the IBM card is a x8 connector and the supermicro only needs x4. Does everyone else using ESXi really tolerate their drives spinning 24/7? Is there no other way? Thanks!

That is the same as I used. I changed the controller in ESXi to be pvscsi, but I did not re-issue the vmkfstools commands. I get no smart info and no spin control. Somehow I gotta fix that or the whole virtualized unraid deal flys out the window. I'm sure I will get there. More tips are greatly appreciated! Thanks!

I followed the instructions in here http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=7914.0 to map disks directly to the UnRAID VM. It seems to be working. However, the SMART status is not coming through and I'm getting blinking green balls so it doesn't even seem them as spun up. What is the preferred method of mapping disks to UnRAID on ESXi 5.1? Thanks.

To answer your question, the default which is a LSI SCSI. UPDATE! I completely deleted my datastore, reformated and recreated. This time is was as VMFS-5 (I didn't realize there were different versions until I started down the clean-n-clear path.) So I started with a 100% clean slate and this time it found the unRAID.vmdk file (which is 1KB). I'm not sure what the 1GB "flat" file is even for.... Another tidbit which is probably documented a zillion times it that you need the network adapter to be E1000, as the Flexible option results in no eth0 interface. Now I will attempt to map the 2 rotated HDD's into the VM. They exist on the same SATA ICH10 controller as the SSD datastore. I hope that works ok. Thanks!

OK, I am still stuck on not being able to add the pre-built .vmdk file. I've got ESXi 5.1 running on my Asus P5Q Deluxe mobo. I put the .vmdk files in my "datastore1" in the VM-unraid directory after creating the VM using the Typical template and Ubuntu 32b. Attached are snips from showing the file attrs in the datastore and showing me trying to add the vmdk and it not showing up in the chooser. Pulling my hair out on what should be pretty straighforward.... Thanks!

BetaQuasi appears to be using ESXi 5.1. Was 4.1 a typo? If not I'd recommend trying 5.1. Nope, not a typo, I just started with 4.1 since I found a lot of posts regarding that. It's all a big experiment, so I'll switch up to 5.1 and give it another go. This time I'll probably not install to USB and just install on the SSD, assuming you can use the same disk as the ESXi server install and a datastore... Thanks.

It is great that you have posted these images! I'm just getting started with ESXi but I am not totally ignorant to VM's and Hypervisors. This is definitely a level of complexity above VMWare Workstation and V-box... I have a test rig that I am trying to experiment with. I've been reading a number of posts, but for some reason I'm still struggling. Here's what I've got and what I've done: Asus P5Q-Deluxe Q6600 CPU 4GB 60GB SSD (as datastore) 2x 1 TB HDD's (mapped http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=7914.0) 16GB USB running ESXi 2GB SD-card volume = UNRAID setup with RC5.0-12a AiO ESXi 4.1 installed on USB stick and 60GB set as "datastore1" Created "VM-unraid" as Ubuntu 32b, no disk assigned. Went to Configuration tab for the server, right click on datastore1 and browse datastore. Uploaded the unRAID-flat.vmdk file. Went to VM-unraid machine and then Edit Settings Hardware Add.. "Hard Disk", Use an existing virtual disk, browse, go the VM-unraid folder in datastore1 and there are no files to select!?!?!? Any hint on what I'm doing wrong? I know it must be something painfully stupid. Thanks!