Homelab start up questions/help on ESXi

Craigk_c19 · April 22, 2019

1 hour ago, Mikensan said:

Just wanted to add that a lot of ebay sellers now pre-flash their LSI varients without any added cost. I actually just bought a m1015 cheaper than what I paid years ago and it updated and flashed to IT mode.

May I ask what the difference is between a few of these HBA, the LSI 9205-8i, 9207-8i, M1015? In the FreeNAS forum, I was linked a 9205-8i for an excellent cheap option? I can only find it on eBay though, and no info on google searches about it. The 9207-8i seems like a popular easy option to go, and I can get around $45 on eBay, that is about what I'm budgeting for this component. I've seen the M1015 floating around in a lot of topics as well though. Currently, I planned to spend $45 on a 9207-8i that is already in IT mode and update to latest firmware once I got it. Is there any reason to chose one over the other?

Mikensan · April 22, 2019

2 hours ago, Craigk_c19 said:

May I ask what the difference is between a few of these HBA, the LSI 9205-8i, 9207-8i, M1015? In the FreeNAS forum, I was linked a 9205-8i for an excellent cheap option? I can only find it on eBay though, and no info on google searches about it. The 9207-8i seems like a popular easy option to go, and I can get around $45 on eBay, that is about what I'm budgeting for this component. I've seen the M1015 floating around in a lot of topics as well though. Currently, I planned to spend $45 on a 9207-8i that is already in IT mode and update to latest firmware once I got it. Is there any reason to chose one over the other?

Given your use case there's no differences so long as it passes the drives directly to the O/S (IT mode). There are other features these cards offer that makes one better than the other in terms of RAID performance, but you will be using FreeNAS so it isn't pertinent. Doesn't hurt to make sure it's SATA 3 / 6gbps as well (in case you throw some SSDs on there).

Craigk_c19 · April 22, 2019

6 minutes ago, Mikensan said:

Given your use case there's no differences so long as it passes the drives directly to the O/S (IT mode). There are other features these cards offer that makes one better than the other in terms of RAID performance, but you will be using FreeNAS so it isn't pertinent. Doesn't hurt to make sure it's SATA 3 / 6gbps as well (in case you throw some SSDs on there).

That does matter I planned on having at least 1 SSD for catching and keep seeing write times for FreeNas and ESXi needs a sloth drive or something like that to make it not hurt the performance of writes. So ill look a little more into them and see what i can find but thank you again for the input!

Mikensan · April 22, 2019

1 hour ago, Craigk_c19 said:

That does matter I planned on having at least 1 SSD for catching and keep seeing write times for FreeNas and ESXi needs a sloth drive or something like that to make it not hurt the performance of writes. So ill look a little more into them and see what i can find but thank you again for the input!

Majority are 6gbps, just check your model numbers of which you intend to buy. If you have SATA connections available on the motherboard you can plop your SSD on one of those, usually the SATA controllers on motherboards are pretty dumb.