I have an unraid system in a 12 bay norco case.  4 onboard SATAs and an 8 port SAS.  No real room to move here...  I would like to add dual SSDs for Vmware to use.  Any advice?  Is SAS expanders or Estata a valid option?

You could run esxi of an usb stick and passthru your sata controllers.. that way you would be in esxi.. you would need to one drive and/or ssd to host your vmdk's on though..

You could run esxi of an usb stick and passthru your sata controllers.. that way you would be in esxi.. you would need to one drive and/or ssd to host your vmdk's on though..

 

Right.  The advice I am looking for is how to add the SSD without using up a slot in my norco case, because technically there is not one available.

You could run esxi of an usb stick and passthru your sata controllers.. that way you would be in esxi.. you would need to one drive and/or ssd to host your vmdk's on though..

 

Right.  The advice I am looking for is how to add the SSD without using up a slot in my norco case, because technically there is not one available.

 

When you say slot in your case I assume somewhere ther 3.5 hdds go, not the slot on the motherboard?

 

If you pass through the 4 motherboard and the 8 sata card slots you don't have any more sata ports for the VMDKs.

What motherboard are you using?

 

If you are talking about 3.5hhd slots in the case, then with 2.5 ssds you could just velcro or tape them somewhere where there is spare room.

Which Case?

Josh

I have 12 avilable ports.  8 SAS and 4 onbard.  In a 12 bay case.

 

I am using a Biostar A780L3G and a Norco 2212

 

You could run esxi of an usb stick and passthru your sata controllers.. that way you would be in esxi.. you would need to one drive and/or ssd to host your vmdk's on though..

 

Right.  The advice I am looking for is how to add the SSD without using up a slot in my norco case, because technically there is not one available.

 

Okay... If I understand correctly your sata slots as well as your case itself is full... Then it looks like you need to expand anyhow.. And more then just for the SSD..

 

I would advise investing in another SATA 8 port card, moving all your unraid drives to the two sata cards and pass them thru to the unraid vm in esxi.. That leaves your 4 motherboard slots free for ESXI..

 

Kind of a big investment but an expander would not work I think since you need to pass thru the drive controller and you need a controller NOT passed thru to the unraid vm..

 

Only other thing I could think of is add a cheapo 2 port SATA card, attach the SSD to that and pass thru motherboard and sata card to the unraid vm.. But sounds like bad advice, you will need to expand anyhow..

 

For the SSD physical placement.. just hang or velcro it anywhere... Thats not the biggest issue..

Looking at your motherboard you can't add another SATA 8 port card, you only have one PCIE slot.

 

I'm assuming you have the two PCI slots free.

 

I think your motherboard is going to hold you back a bit:

1) the SATA ports are only SATA2 which will limit your SSD speeds if you move the SSDs onto the motherboard. If you do that you still need somewhere to move those 4 unRaid HDDs.

2) PCI SATA cards are going to be a little speed limited if used for HDDs and a lot if SSDs.

 

Cheapest solution is to add a PCI SATA card for a data store but two SSD is going to be a waste, either one SSD or just use a HDD. I can't help you with an ESXi compatible PCI SATA card. Mine are all PCIe.

 

Josh

Assuming you don't want to upgrade to a new motherboard/CPU combo (which is really your best option, as you'd then have plenty of expansion slots and/or already have enough total ports if you simply bought one with 6 SATA ports) ... then you have basically 3 alternatives:

 

(1)  Buy a 2-port PCI expansion card.  This will work fine; but will, as already noted, limit the bandwidth available for your SSDs.    It will still work fine, however -- you just won't be getting maximum performance from the SSDs.

 

(2)  Use a SAS expander.  This is probably your most economical choice, as there won't be bandwidth limitations on the SSDs (just don't connect them to the expander ports).

 

(3)  Buy a 12 port PCIe x8 or x16 card.    This is the best alternative ... but also the most costly.

 

Whoa !!  Just thought a bit more about what you're asking here.

 

To use UnRAID in ESXi you need to pass-through the controller.  That complicates this in two ways ...

 

(1)  I don't believe you can pass-through the onboard ports (not certain about that, but most of the discussions r.e. ESXi indicate that is the case).    Assuming that's correct, then you have to go with Option #3 above ... i.e. buy a 12-port card and simply pass it through to ESXi for the UnRAID drives.  So you'd need something like this:  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115059

... or you could use your existing 8-port card with a SAS expander to support 4 more drives, so they were all attached to the controller card

 

(2)  Both your motherboard and your CPU have to support hardware pass-through [iOMMU]    Without that support, you can't pass through the controller.  If you have an IOMMU-capable CPU, you should be able to look in the BIOS and see if there's an IOMMU setting to enable/disable this feature (It may show as "IOV").    If you don't have this capability, I don't think you can do what you want without upgrading the motherboard and/or CPU.

 

 

Some motherboard ports can be passed through, depends on the chip set. Not sure about that biostar one though.

I still think new motherboard is the cheapest depending on what cpu you have

 

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Not sure about it being the "cheapest" ... but as I said earlier, a new motherboard/CPU is definitely "... your best option."