Experience Using a IBM ServeRAID M1015

iantaylor.1 · 16 Oct 2012 at 17:43

Hi everyone im currently in the process of buying new parts for my server build just wondering if anyone on here has previous experience with this card.

I will be using 8x3TB

Drives

Dimension · 16 Oct 2012 at 20:50

This is basically a re-badged LSI 9208 and can be flashed with the LSI firmware if required.

I have been using the LSI 8 port card for a couple of years and had no problems with it or compatibility with the 24 port Intel SAS expander (it is compatible with the HP expander as well) although I do not use traditional RAID functionality of the card as I use FlexRaid for my parity.

It works well with VMware ESX.

iantaylor.1 · 16 Oct 2012 at 21:01

Well i should be ordering it soon hopefully from what i can see it will support my 3TB drives without an issue. i should be using them in a raid 0 for best performance. As all my data is backed up on separate drives incase the worse did happen and a drive failed

iantaylor.1 · 17 Oct 2012 at 09:07

Does anyone know if you can run two or more of these cards in the same server without causing issues. or would the hp Expander be my best option but i would need to use the onboard raid 0 Feature

iantaylor.1 · 17 Oct 2012 at 09:11

Well i have now ordered my card should be here tomorrow along with my SAS breakout cables

shaf · 17 Oct 2012 at 13:35

I've just ordered it too and will be using in my esxi box.

Praetorian · 17 Oct 2012 at 14:59

I use three of these cards in my file server and they operate fantastically together even though they extend the boot process whilst all three cards are interrogated

Very fast and consistant which is the main thing I was looking for

Run's 16x2tb Hitachi Coolspin drives absolutely fine and pushing through nearly 1gb/s IO wise

If you're thinking of using ESXi with three cards, you may run into some issues as experienced here http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1715252&highlight=m1015

iantaylor.1 · 19 Oct 2012 at 20:55

Well my current plan is to be using the card with Server 2008 R2. but at the moment having a few issues getting the card to run ive managed to get it installed within windows but it wont start and i dont see the device's bios during normal boot.

iantaylor.1 · 19 Oct 2012 at 21:03

Hopefully once ive finished work tomorrow i will get time to actually look into the issue.

iantaylor.1 · 26 Oct 2012 at 19:04

Server is now fully setup and running will try to get some pics soon

iantaylor.1 · 30 Oct 2012 at 22:28

Pictures of my new Server

Well here the pictures of my new server.

Drive Config
Corsair SSD for OS
2TB for Virtual Machines
8x3TB for Main Storage Striped in Raid 0 via the IBM M1015

as you can tell had to zip tie the SSD as i ran out of space in the drive bays.

All comments are welcome. (and i know the Hard Drive bay filter needs cleaning

)

Shad · 31 Oct 2012 at 07:49

That's pretty awesome but RAID0? I can't quite get my head around that bit. Either you have some crazy need for 24Tb of completely disposable high speed storage, or you have the mother of all backup systems in place. I hope it's the latter!!

iantaylor.1 · 31 Oct 2012 at 08:25

Well the IBM M1015 does not have many options when it comes to raid without buying the add on chip for it any way. with the add on chip it only supports Raid 0,1,10 and does not have a backup battery. and yes all my data is backed up on external hard drives while its not the fastest solution for backing up my data its the cheapest as i was on a very tight budget for the build.