Hi
Im in the middle of a build, which has been a long story, which I'd rather not go in too much detail with here (it upsets my blood pressure :) ) - unless there's a real need for it.
Roughly put, I have an ESX build, and a IBM M5015 raid card. After much time invested, and in the end building my own management/monitoring solution (since the LSI Vmware CIM provider is utterly dismal), I came to the realisation that LSI have disabled DS3 support on all newer firmwares. And I really would like to spin down my disks providing long term raid 6 storage, sitting idle for 7/8 of a 24 hour period... about 90 watts in a home server 24/7 is something really. So it seems to be alot of time wasted so far.
Now Im looking for alternatives, and I've got my eyes set on FreeNAS with a lesser controller card, as the total cost more or less equals a newer ESXi supported Adaptec controller, which has full drive spindown support. I only replaced my trusted Adaptec 51645 card, because it was absolutely impossible to get management features working through the ESXi... it ran flawlessly - but what's it worth, if you cant know when a drive fails?...
The real question though, is wether DS3 support is present for any of the following LSI firmwares in IT mode:
9207-8i
9211-8i
If not - then it seems to be a lost cause (back to a new expensive controller then... sigh), unless someone can recommend a SAS/SATA compatible controller card, on par with any of these, featuring DS3 support/passthrough in firmware.
I did quite some searching - not only on these forums - and eventually must admit my Google-fu just don't cut it. I have found information about a number of other LSI firmwares, which indicates it generally isn't possible to passthrough the Dimmer Switch 3 control to the drives, on any LSI firmwares of a newer date - but nothing conclusive on the 2 I have listed above.
So do anyone know for a fact, and/or can recommend a SAS/SATA card on par with these that do?
Major thanks in advance for all your time.
Im in the middle of a build, which has been a long story, which I'd rather not go in too much detail with here (it upsets my blood pressure :) ) - unless there's a real need for it.
Roughly put, I have an ESX build, and a IBM M5015 raid card. After much time invested, and in the end building my own management/monitoring solution (since the LSI Vmware CIM provider is utterly dismal), I came to the realisation that LSI have disabled DS3 support on all newer firmwares. And I really would like to spin down my disks providing long term raid 6 storage, sitting idle for 7/8 of a 24 hour period... about 90 watts in a home server 24/7 is something really. So it seems to be alot of time wasted so far.
Now Im looking for alternatives, and I've got my eyes set on FreeNAS with a lesser controller card, as the total cost more or less equals a newer ESXi supported Adaptec controller, which has full drive spindown support. I only replaced my trusted Adaptec 51645 card, because it was absolutely impossible to get management features working through the ESXi... it ran flawlessly - but what's it worth, if you cant know when a drive fails?...
The real question though, is wether DS3 support is present for any of the following LSI firmwares in IT mode:
9207-8i
9211-8i
If not - then it seems to be a lost cause (back to a new expensive controller then... sigh), unless someone can recommend a SAS/SATA compatible controller card, on par with any of these, featuring DS3 support/passthrough in firmware.
I did quite some searching - not only on these forums - and eventually must admit my Google-fu just don't cut it. I have found information about a number of other LSI firmwares, which indicates it generally isn't possible to passthrough the Dimmer Switch 3 control to the drives, on any LSI firmwares of a newer date - but nothing conclusive on the 2 I have listed above.
So do anyone know for a fact, and/or can recommend a SAS/SATA card on par with these that do?
Major thanks in advance for all your time.
