Hi everyone,

 

Forgive me if I'm asking a simple question, or one that I should have found the answer to elsewhere, but I cannot find a definitive answer to this one.

 

I have a server that I currently run ESXi on - it runs a host of windows virtual machines as well as a Sophos UTM gateway.  I've been looking at options to install some NAS software and that's where I discovered unRAID.  It looks like unRAID will do all I need but I'm not too sure about my RAID setup.  I currently use an LSI RAID controller with 3 separate LUNs that are utilised within ESXi.  But, from my reading, I understand that unRAID prefers to handle the RAID side of things itself. 

 

So what are my options?  I need to use the RAID card because I have a SAS expander setup in my server case.  But do I just create single disk RAID 0s so that unRAID gets to see each individual disk?

 

Thanks very much for your help. 

 

Ady

Have you looked (and searched) in this thread:

 

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

 

and this one:

 

  http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=12767.0

 

Basically, you need a card which can just serve as a SATA expansion card to provide more ports.  Some RAID cards either support this directly or can be flashed with new firmware to support that mode.  It completely depends on which card you have.  If you look in the 'Hardware' area (in which this thread appears) you will find a lot of information on various SATA cards and their compatibility with unRAID. 

Thanks Frank.

 

Looks as though unRAID isn't going to meet my needs.  It's a shame that it isn't flexible enough to allow you to use hardware RAID.

Thanks Frank.

 

Looks as though unRAID isn't going to meet my needs.  It's a shame that it isn't flexible enough to allow you to use hardware RAID.

I am reasonably certain that I have seen mention of LSI controllers being flashed to IT mode for use with unRAID.  It is also possible to use any RAID controller that can hide the fact a set of disks are a RAID array and present them to unRAID as if they were a single disk.    You are then, however, reliant on the facilities offered by the hardware RAID card for recovering from disk failures.

 

If you want to use hardware RAID then I tend to agree with you that unRAID may be unsuitable for you.  The many benefits the architecture of unRAID provide will not be achievable if you want to use hardware RAID.