Which HBA for ESXi?

[alizee]

I've been playing around with ESXi, and I'm going to change my server over to virtualizing. My only issue is that I need to change my HD controller to something compatible. Right now I have a RocketRAID 2720 (which is supposedly compatible with 4.1, but I've had nothing but trouble with that OS), and I would like something comparable.

I'd like something with 2x SFF-8087 ports, but if it has 8x SATA and is reasonably priced, I could buy some new reverse breakout cables. PCI Express x4, x8, or x16 is fine, I have the port for all of them. Also, cheaper the better. I'd really like to find something compatible for ~$100. I don't need RAID at all, just a controller and ports.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Emulex]

i probably have a BR10i which has two sf-8077 for cheap. Good for raid-0/1

 

[heymrdj]

I use an LSI Megaraid 8308 ELP with BBU. It's compatible out of the box and has excellent performance, and you can get it at pretty good used prices as well. Two 8087 ports, I use it with two SAS 4 drive bays.

 

[alizee]

Just to give an update to anyone that might google this later:

I bought two IBM M5015s. They're on ebay for ~$60-$75 if you bid, or ~$100 buy it now (I'm a sucker, and I'm impatient, so guess which route I took).
http://www.servethehome.com/ibm-m1015-part-1-started-lsi-92208i/

The BR10i is a better deal, ~$40. Most mechanical hard drives aren't really pushing more than SATA 3Gbps anyway, so you wouldn't really lose any performance.

For me, the M5015s work perfectly. They show up just fine in ESXi 5, and I even mapped one directly to a VM using IOMMU. I realize that I probably could have also done this with the RocketRAIDs and just installed the driver in Windows or Linux.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with the purchase. Headache free and probably better support if I ever migrate away from my current setup.