microserver esxi hardware raid....?

deano

deano

deano

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Hi,

is it really worth spend a few hundred on a HP 410 raid card for the micro server when running esxi...?

are there alternative road cards that are suitable..?

anyone moved from non road to hardware road in esxi on these boxes is there much of a speed improvement?

TIA
 
deano said:
Hi,

is it really worth spend a few hundred on a HP 410 raid card for the micro server when running esxi...?

are there alternative road cards that are suitable..?

anyone moved from non road to hardware road in esxi on these boxes is there much of a speed improvement?

TIA
Click to expand...

i have heard good things about the hp p400 raid cards. they come in two flavors 256mb and 512mb ram.

i am actually thinking of buy one for my microserver, you can get them cheap on fleabay
 
I could always just buy another micro server and use the current one as an iSCSI target :)
 
lixxus said:
i have heard good things about the hp p400 raid cards. they come in two flavors 256mb and 512mb ram.
Click to expand...
I'm planning on the exact same setup as the OP.

I managed to rustle up a P400 512Mb w/BBWC, All the bits are ordered including the wide SAS to 4xSATA cable, 8Gb memory, and a USB stick to boot from.

I'll report back once everything has arrived.
 
P400's are pretty cheap just seem to able to find the right cable not much exposure to all this SAS stuff.
 
My microserver has an LSI 8888ELP card, of course its much better, but only when you have multiple VM's - I think it would be better spending the money on SSD's, as that would offer greater improvement. Get a couple of SSD's for the VM's c: drive OS's/Apps and a couple of big sata disk for d: drive, slower storage.

The raid card also gives out heat and increases the low wattage of the microserver quite a bit.
 
deano said:
Hi,

is it really worth spend a few hundred on a HP 410 raid card for the micro server when running esxi...?

are there alternative road cards that are suitable..?

anyone moved from non road to hardware road in esxi on these boxes is there much of a speed improvement?

TIA
Click to expand...


  • What raid level are you thinking of using ?.
  • What drives do you have ?.
  • What controller / chipset are you currently using (what does the Microserver use) ?.
  • What sort of VMs are you looking to build ?.
  • What sort of load are you likely to be putting on it ?.
The IBM M1015s are very popular SAS2 controllers (I have two) and are great for JBOD, raid levels 0/1/00/10. Raid 5 is available by adding a feature key but raid 5 on a controller without a BBU and cache is not the best way to go.

There is a good stock of these on the same place you are looking for the HP card (the US version of the site have them for US$75 including PCI brackets). The M1015 does need flashing back to a LSI 9240 - raid or a LSI 9211 - HBA (firmware available on the LSI site and lots of threads on how to do it). You need to find a board that will allow you to flash the card and this can be trickey but I have found 2 MSI LGA775 board that work fine (none of the LGA1155 boards I have tried worked properly).

There is a guy on the VMWare forums who has given comments on the P400 with ESXi 4 here which could be helpful. The P400 only does SATA at 150MB/s but for hard drives that should be fine (SSD may be bottlenecked).

RB
 
Hi,

this will be used in a home enviroment.

To answer RimBLock

was going to use RAID 10
Drives are Hitach can't remember model now but 5400 RPM's I believe.
i bee live this is the chipset http://www.amd.com/us/products/embedded/chipsets/Pages/785E.aspx
Linux and FreeBSD, possibly exchange/SBS
little load

I'll take a look at the IBM road card, thanks.

thanks for the link to info regarding the P400.

Created a ESXi server for production at work today with 6 x 74GB 10k SAS disk and a DL360 G5

Seems pretty good, running a few VM's

thanks
 
deano said:
Hi,

this will be used in a home enviroment.

To answer RimBLock

was going to use RAID 10
Drives are Hitach can't remember model now but 5400 RPM's I believe.
i bee live this is the chipset http://www.amd.com/us/products/embedded/chipsets/Pages/785E.aspx
Linux and FreeBSD, possibly exchange/SBS
little load

I'll take a look at the IBM road card, thanks.

thanks for the link to info regarding the P400.

Created a ESXi server for production at work today with 6 x 74GB 10k SAS disk and a DL360 G5

Seems pretty good, running a few VM's

thanks
Click to expand...

If you are going from raid 10 to raid 10 on a dedicated card then imagine the speed will not be fantastically different. You should see some improvements with something like the M1015. If you are going from no raid to raid 10 with 4+ drives then it should be a fair bit nippier. The card will give a more robust setup and the ability to pass the drives to a singel VM using VT-d (if board and CPU supported) allowing native drive support (no ESXi virtual drives formats) so if formatted in NTFS and passed to a SBS VM then it can read them. If you then loose the ESXi server, you can pull the card and drives and put them in another Windows machine that uses NTFS and it will be able to read and use them with all the data that is on them.

Linux setups will run pretty well but if you are thinking about SBS then you are going to want to pump the server with lots of ram. I ran SBS on a dedicated machine for proof of concept and at 8GB it chugged. 12+GB it was usable for me. Considering most mITX boards only have two ram slots than means at least 1x8GB stick if not two and they are still a little pricey.

My ESXi unit is currently running on a Intel DQ67EP board (VT-d & AMT 7.0) with an i5-2400, 16GB ram and an Intel dual port ET network card. Works very well with the limited stuff I throw at it. If I was to upgrade, I would probably move to the Intel S1200KP board with ECC ram and an Intel E3-1235 Xeon cpu (around the same price as an i5-2500K for the E3).

To answer your question, in my opinion, if you can get it all for around 100 quid then I would do it. Some Enterprise Exchange admins here should be able to advise better on disk usage patterns for exchange.

RB
 
I finally had everything delivered so can give an update on using the P400 in the microserver.

The hard disk 'backplane' consists of 4 right angled combined SATA data and power connections. They are screwed in so you can just slide in a hard disk and it's connected.
The power from each of the connectors breaks out to 4xindividual Molex connections.
The data from each combine into the Mini-SAS connector to the motherboard.

The cable I've bought is a SAS 8484 to 4x SATA. To use it I'd also need 4xSATA power to molex connections (or hacksaw the combined connector), and have to do the fiddly job of connecting the drives up while they are in their slots.
It's doable but I'm not sure about the clearance between the fan grille and the connectors.

If I was to go for this, I'd probably want to get the same cable but with right angled cables at both ends (The clearance above the P400 is OK with straight cables, just a bit of a WIBNI).

However, what I really want at this point is a SAS 8484 Female to SAS 8087 Female cable, or a SAS 8087 (Mini SAS) 'gender bender'. Neither of which appear to exist.


For the price of a P400 vs P410, I can see the appeal - but you will have to compromise and do a little extra work to get everything connected up.

I've not given up on an ideal solution yet, I got the P400 for free so my outlay on this is £8 for the SAS cable. If I make any breakthroughs I will post back.
 
Si. said:
How about some pictures?
Click to expand...

If I get time I'll post some tonight, everythings in very close quarters in the case, so I'll have to see how they turn out.

########
Update:
I haven't had time to take my own photos, but I have spent a bit of time trying to find a non-destructive way of using the P400 in the Microserver.
I have found a brilliant thread on OCUKs long lost Australian cousins forums (not sure if linking to it is bad and banned). Its under 'Storage and Backup' and they have a Microserver thread to rival our own out of control monster.
Page 99 is worth a look, a brilliant photo of the drive backplane to illustrate my clumsy attempts at describing it above.
 
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Yet another update:

I have approached a cable company to see if they can source or make the required cable, I've sent them a diagram I found from another forum of exactly what is needed.

Hopefully they will come back with good news and a good price. I will post what information I can while still adhering to the no-competitors rule.
 
I was looking to get a P400 or P410 but then I came across this link: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/255525

After reading that I'm feeling a bit skeptical about the P400/P410's performance. Why would you choose a card that only runs on SATA I speeds unless you're using enterprise SAS drives? Wouldn't an Adaptec 2405 perform better? Also it has a MiniSAS port which is located at the edge of the card which means the MiniSAS cable in the Miroserver enclosure would have no problem connecting to it and not requiring a female MiniSAS to Male SAS cable/converter!
 
I've currently got a M1015 in mine which is quite a painless upgrade, remove a couple of cable ties and the mini sas will fit into the card perfectly :)

The only option i've not got round to sorting yet is raid 10 (use to HP raid cards) need to have a read through the manual. It's certainly less drastic than getting a P400 in !!!
 
deano said:
I've currently got a M1015 in mine which is quite a painless upgrade, remove a couple of cable ties and the mini sas will fit into the card perfectly :)

The only option i've not got round to sorting yet is raid 10 (use to HP raid cards) need to have a read through the manual. It's certainly less drastic than getting a P400 in !!!
Click to expand...

That's a decent card. Did you consider flashing it to an LSI 92XX?
 
which card would be better out of the ServeRAID M1015 or the Adaptec 2405 as they are pretty much the same price..... Have now configured 4 x 1Tb 7200rpm hitachi drives in RAID 10 on the ServeRAID M1015 will let you know findings later
 
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