Specific question about using ESX with RAID set-up

[DJMK4]

Hi all,

I am thinking about purchasing a Dell Poweredge T20, this is to upgrade my current small form ESX host at home *running in non-disk RAID set-up* to an ESX host on the T20 running with 2 x 2TB disks.

From what I understand, ESX does not support software RAID, so thats my Dell PE T20 built in RAID out of the question, am I going to need to purchase a RAID hardware card? and whats the cheapest option ? (if there is one) I dont want to have to fork out loads to be able to achieve a simple RAID set-up with two disks.

Any help appreciated, many thanks

 

[DJMK4]

I guess its not a necessity, I could indeed backup vmdk's to the second drive.

If needed I could later look at adding a card in.

 

[DJMK4]

Im not really concerned too much about performance, this will be for a lab box only really.

Aslong as its functional and usable and not too much of a performance impact,

Im seeing the cost of a HP P410 from around £27 to £47 if im looking at the correct one.


Or if going for a Dell Perc, would something like a Dell PERC 6i PCIE SAS RAID Controller T774H around £25-£30 do?

 

[DJMK4]

Yeh im looking to go down that route rather than ESX on RAID, it will let me focus more on what I am labbing at the moment.

 

[DJMK4]

Yeh I wouldn't want to extend the datastore to the second disk, it could lead to issues. I would rather have them as 2 x Seperate datastores

I cant see me needing anymore than 2 x 2TB Western Digital RED disks for datastore1 and 2 at this point