I'm looking for a RAID controller card that I can pass through to my unRAID VM via VT-d.

 

Preliminary research indicates that the PERC 6/i would be the best option since it's what my server officially supports, but eBay has a dizzying variety of PERC 6/i options at various price points - some come with the PCIe card by itself, others have the card + cables (what are the cables for?), still others come with the card + backup battery, and a few offer card + cables + backup battery, which I presume is the full package. Which of these options do I need given my usage scenario?

 

Finally, Dell also lists "1 proprietary mezzanine for LSI® 2008 SAS daughtercard" as an option as well, but I have no idea what this is...

for unraid you dont actually want a "raid card" you want a jbod card as unraid itself takes care of the array and the perc's dont pass through smart info or direct drive access

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=12404.0

 

^ this thread answers all

Also check this thread.

 

And the listed adapters in the wiki.

 

 

 

Many thanks to both of you for the advice and suggestions so far

 

A complicating factor which I should have initially mentioned is that I'm planning on virtualizing unRAID, so both the hypervisor (which will most likely be either KVM or ESXi) and unRAID have to support the card in question. Alternatively, I can pass the onboard ICH10 controller through to unRAID and boot the hypervisor off of the add-in PCIe card, which I suppose would move the discussion out of the scope of unRAID and into the scope of specific hypervisors.

A complicating factor which I should have initially mentioned is that I'm planning on virtualizing unRAID, so both the hypervisor (which will most likely be either KVM or ESXi) and unRAID have to support the card in question.

 

That is not entirely correct in the sense, that the support in the hypervisor ist not that of providing an appropriate driver (like in order to make use of the card in the hypervisor).

As an example, you can easily pass trough a TV card, where obviously ESXI does not support these types of cards.

 

The card however does need to "behave" nicely when it comes to I/O & memory alignment and interrupt management.

But AFAIU this is more in the domain of the embedded subsystems, like BIOS or chipsets, not hypervisor software..

 

A complicating factor which I should have initially mentioned is that I'm planning on virtualizing unRAID, so both the hypervisor (which will most likely be either KVM or ESXi) and unRAID have to support the card in question.

 

That is not entirely correct in the sense, that the support in the hypervisor ist not that of providing an appropriate driver (like in order to make use of the card in the hypervisor).

As an example, you can easily pass trough a TV card, where obviously ESXI does not support these types of cards.

 

The card however does need to "behave" nicely when it comes to I/O & memory alignment and interrupt management.

But AFAIU this is more in the domain of the embedded subsystems, like BIOS or chipsets, not hypervisor software..

FYI: ESXi 5.0 works fine with my TV tuners in pass through.

 

PCI cards passed through to VMs: AVerMedia Duet, Hauppauge HVR-2250 & HVR-1600

USB tuners off USB Card passed through: Hauppauge HVR-950Q, HD-PVR

Network tuners (so should be a problem anywhere network access exists):HDHR-Version 1

]FYI: ESXi 5.0 works fine with my TV tuners in pass through.

 

Yes, ESXi passthrough works but ESXi itself does not (need to) support the card.

FWIW i'm using a digital-devices quad-DVB-S2 with an Octopus Dual-CI bridge (PCIe x1) successfully with ESXi.

I can't say I'm fully aware of all of the details and I might be wrong, but there's a few people who have reported that their SIL3132 can no longer be passed through in ESXi 5.5: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=29503.msg265118#msg265118. I guess it has me a bit worried about whether or not the other cards listed in the sticky will work...