Need hardware raid card for ESXi datastore

[znelbok]

Can anyone suggest a relateively inexpensive raid card that I can use for my VMWare datastore drive.

 

I am currently running a single drive, but I want to mirror it for better protection.  I have found a lot of 4 and 8 port cards and they are very expensive and I have no idea if they are supported by ESXi5.

 

Thanks for the help

 

Mick

[Johnm]

Your best best is any LSI based card. That includes OEM cards also like IBM or Dell.

 

Areca cards can work with a minor driver install. check first before buying one of those.

 

if you are using only SSD's, the IBM m1050 should be good for raid0, 1 & 10 with its lack of cache.

for spinners, you will want on-board ram.

[StevenD]

I purchased a few HP Smart Array P400 w/512MB and Batteries for under $50/each off of eBay. 

 

You can get cables from Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Tripp-Lite-S502-20N-Internal-inches/dp/B0027JQI9O) or eBay (http://www.ebay.com/itm/SAS-Controller-SFF-8484-32-Pin-4-SATA-7-Pin-HDD-Back-Plane-Cable-50cm-Black-/300620745247?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item45fe648a1f).

 

I'm currently using them in my OpenFiler SAN boxes, but with VMWare 5 and Storage DRS, I'm considering moving them (along with a 4- drive RAID 0+1 array) to each of my ESXi hosts.

[cj0r]

What kind of performance are you getting with the P400's?

[znelbok]

Thanks guys

 

These are spinners (6Gb/s) WD drives.

 

I can't find any reference for a m1050 card - is that the right part number?

 

The P400 looks viable - shame its only SATAII, but that may be all i can afford.  As soon as you go to hardware raid, the price seems to go up exponentially.

 

Mick

 

 

[Ford Prefect]

I can't find any reference for a m1050 card - is that the right part number?

 

...that'll be the "IBM ServeRAID M1015" card....it is an OEM version of the LSI 9240-8i, but it lacks RAID5 support in its FW.

It apparently ships as standard with a lot of System X servers from IBM and most customers replace them right away with some more powerful stuff.

So, there are a lot of them floating around as New in the Bay.

 

It works well with ESXi.

[znelbok]

but is it a hardware raid?  I thought they were just software raid?

 

'They don't have memory on board (that I am aware of) and they don't have a battery

 

Are they a full hardware raid card that ESX can boot from?

 

Mick

[Ford Prefect]

Yes, the M1015 is a HW-Raid card, see here: http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/tips0740.html

Battery is only needed for a Memory based cache, when power drops, but the M1015 has no cache, thus no battery.

 

ESXi will install onto a drive/volume based on the M1015 ...in order to boot from it, you should set the boot option in both BIOSes (mobo + card).

But that wasn't what you asked for in your OP....

I recommend to install ESXi to a lightweight disk or USB flash and use volumes on the raidcard for your datastore (store your VMs).

ESXi boot drive can be recovered with a new install within minutes....IMHO it is not worth it to waste a device from the raid-config for this purpose.

[brian89gp]

Yes, the M1015 is a HW-Raid card, see here: http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/tips0740.html

Battery is only needed for a Memory based cache, when power drops, but the M1015 has no cache, thus no battery.

 

RAID1 write performance isn't that great on the M1015 (or any card that lacks a cache/battery really)

 

I would suggest the Dell PERC 5/i or 6/i.  The 5/i is a pretty good card that is cheap, has cheap BBU, and performs pretty good for its price.  The 6/i is better, 6g, and more expensive.  Anything Dell is almost guarenteed to work out of the box with ESXi.

 

The P400 isn't too bad.  The only thing I don't like about HP cards in general is they almost always have an "advanced license" of some sort to add extra features.

[StevenD]

What kind of performance are you getting with the P400's?

 

I'm not sure this is the best way to judge performance, but here is an HD Tune capture.  This is ESXi 5.0, connected via fiber to an OpenFiler SAN. The OpenFiler box has a P400 card, with 512MB RAM and a Battery backup for the cache.  Connected to the P400 is four 1TB Samsung F3's in a RAID 0+1.  I currently have 6 guests running on this datastore.

 

[WeeboTech]

ssssssssmokin'...........

 

I love those F3's.  Something about the design and cache made them very fast for reads.

 

Can you tell us what hardware you used for the networking side with the fiber connection?

[StevenD]

ssssssssmokin'...........

 

I love those F3's.  Something about the design and cache made them very fast for reads.

 

Can you tell us what hardware you used for the networking side with the fiber connection?

 

- ESXi boxes have Emulex LPe11000 4Gb HBA

- OpenFiler has a QLogic QLA2340 2Gb PCI-X HBA

- Brocade 3250 2Gb fiber channel switch

- LC/LC 50/125 fiber cables

 

I put it together on a whim just to see if I could and teach myself a little more about SANs and Linux.  All of my parts (except the cables) came off of eBay.  Surprisingly, it worked so well, I put it into "Production." 

[WeeboTech]

ssssssssmokin'...........

 

I love those F3's.  Something about the design and cache made them very fast for reads.

 

Can you tell us what hardware you used for the networking side with the fiber connection?

 

- ESXi boxes have Emulex LPe11000 4Gb HBA

- OpenFiler has a QLogic QLA2340 2Gb PCI-X HBA

- Brocade 3250 2Gb fiber channel switch

- LC/LC 50/125 fiber cables

 

I put it together on a whim just to see if I could and teach myself a little more about SANs and Linux.  All of my parts (except the cables) came off of eBay.  Surprisingly, it worked so well, I put it into "Production."

 

SWEET...  I wanted to learn about SAN's myself, but since I hardly use them at work and unRAID remote storage and SSD local storage works so well I've not jumped in yet. This shows me that it's at least feasible for a test environment to learn with. Thanks for the info.

[cj0r]

What kind of performance are you getting with the P400's?

 

I'm not sure this is the best way to judge performance, but here is an HD Tune capture.  This is ESXi 5.0, connected via fiber to an OpenFiler SAN. The OpenFiler box has a P400 card, with 512MB RAM and a Battery backup for the cache.  Connected to the P400 is four 1TB Samsung F3's in a RAID 0+1.  I currently have 6 guests running on this datastore.

 

 

Ah reads are good, about where I was expecting... what about write performance though. From my experience finding the "right" (no pun) card can be a bit of a challenge with ESXi. I've already bought 2 wrong cards haha: first was not a proper Hardware RAID controller and therefore was not recognized for making my datastores, the 2nd was when I learned I needed a BBU to get reasonable write performance (I get very slow performance right now to my RAID 0+1... around 30MB/s tops... reads are over 1GB/s). Unfortunately the 2nd card I bought does not have the option of a BBU which is why I'm back on the market researching.

[znelbok]

Thanks guys

 

Just bought a P400 and two cables.  Now I have to work out to get my data store on the new controller without loosing any data?

 

Mick

[StevenD]

What kind of performance are you getting with the P400's?

 

I'm not sure this is the best way to judge performance, but here is an HD Tune capture.  This is ESXi 5.0, connected via fiber to an OpenFiler SAN. The OpenFiler box has a P400 card, with 512MB RAM and a Battery backup for the cache.  Connected to the P400 is four 1TB Samsung F3's in a RAID 0+1.  I currently have 6 guests running on this datastore.

 

 

 

Ah reads are good, about where I was expecting... what about write performance though. From my experience finding the "right" (no pun) card can be a bit of a challenge with ESXi. I've already bought 2 wrong cards haha: first was not a proper Hardware RAID controller and therefore was not recognized for making my datastores, the 2nd was when I learned I needed a BBU to get reasonable write performance (I get very slow performance right now to my RAID 0+1... around 30MB/s tops... reads are over 1GB/s). Unfortunately the 2nd card I bought does not have the option of a BBU which is why I'm back on the market researching.

 

I created a new virtual disk on one of my VM guests so I could perform some write tests.  Overall, I'm very pleased with the performance I get out of my home ESXi cluster.  It's pieced together on a shoestring budget, relatively speaking (compared to my work setup).

 

Here ya go:

 

READ:

 

 

WRITE:

 

 

 

[znelbok]

I ordered a HP card on ebay but due to a mix up the card is not available, but instead a HP LSI SAS 3041E is.

 

Is this card OK for an ESXi raid card?

 

Trying to find some details but I am unsure of what I am reading as raid is not raid anymore.

 

Mick

[Johnm]

If i recall, the HP LSI SAS 3041E is not a raid card at all. it is just an early 4 port HBA.

If you are looking for raid. keep on looking....

[StevenD]

That is not a true RAID card. It also has no external memory or a battery backup.

[elmetal]

Yes, the M1015 is a HW-Raid card, see here: http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/tips0740.html

Battery is only needed for a Memory based cache, when power drops, but the M1015 has no cache, thus no battery.

 

RAID1 write performance isn't that great on the M1015 (or any card that lacks a cache/battery really)

 

I would suggest the Dell PERC 5/i or 6/i.  The 5/i is a pretty good card that is cheap, has cheap BBU, and performs pretty good for its price.  The 6/i is better, 6g, and more expensive.  Anything Dell is almost guarenteed to work out of the box with ESXi.

 

The P400 isn't too bad.  The only thing I don't like about HP cards in general is they almost always have an "advanced license" of some sort to add extra features.

 

I currently use 2 ssds as my datastores. what would be the cheapest method for me to RAID1 those datastores (I'm currently using ssd1 as the main, and ssd2 as backup) with ok performance? I already have 2 m1015s (that I use for unraid) so I'm familiar with the card and the flashing.

 

I don't want to break the bank, but I also don't want to undo the speed of the SSDs

 

 

[Julez]

Newegg had a pretty good promo on this controller the other day, I think I got it for $138.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118114

 

I've not set it up yet, but but my plan is also to put my datastore on a mirrored RAID array.

I verified this was on the VMware HCL so I don't have many concerns.

 

It's pretty basic, no additional memory or battery backup etc... on this card.

[elmetal]

Newegg had a pretty good promo on this controller the other day, I think I got it for $138.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118114

 

I've not set it up yet, but but my plan is also to put my datastore on a mirrored RAID array.

I verified this was on the VMware HCL so I don't have many concerns.

 

It's pretty basic, no additional memory or battery backup etc... on this card.

 

at that price I can just get another m1015 and flash ir in IR mode and do that for <90 bucks.... right?

[Julez]

Yeah you can, I think my only qualm with it was that it wasn't 600MB/s SATA (not that you're going to saturate that with consumer NAS spinning disk).

I'm goofy like that though.

[elmetal]

so a 1015 in IR mode can be used as a Datastore RAID 1. right?

[unTER]

so a 1015 in IR mode can be used as a Datastore RAID 1. right?

Yes, that should work fine for your Datastore RAID.

 

I have an LSI SAS 9211-8i in IT mode connected to 7 unRAID data drives. Does anyone see an issue if I were to add in an LSI MegaRAID SAS 9240-8i (m1015) to run my Datastore RAID? Are there any conflicts with running the two different cards in differing IT/IR modes? I wouldn't think so, but I wouldn't be surprised either if there were.

 

There's a chance I might go with a Dell PERC 6/i instead, but it'd be nice I guess if it were 6 Gbps instead of 3 Gbps. Sometimes I don't like choices.