N54L with ESXi 5.5 but which Raid Card

[RobD]

Hi All,

 

I have a N54L with ESXi 5.5 running on it without a raid card. So all was great and I was using each single drive as a datastore but today a drive died meaning I lost everything on it (and there was loads).

 

So apart from being gutted I need a Raid card but I'm a tad limited financially (as I need new disks too), I've looked at a HP P410 but I cant much in the UK under £80 could anyone recommend anything else (Adaptec ASR-3405??) which may be a tad cheaper and compatible?

 

Thanks

[Arthur]

FreeNAS wouldn't cost you anything...

 

FreeNAS on HP Microserver N54L – Shared Storage for your ESXi

[Davit2005]

Could also take a look at NexentaStor Community edition. I've used this in the past and personally preferred it to FreeNAS.

 

Used it as a iSCSI target on a seperate box to the ESXi server.

[RobD]

Thanks both, I'll take a look at both but I use my ESXi box fairly extensivly at the moment so not desperate to move away.

 

Thanks

[Arthur]

I use my ESXi box fairly extensively at the moment so not desperate to move away.

Another option would be to use RDM to pass the HDDs through to a FreeNAS or XPEnology VM in ESXi. This way you can continue using ESXi and not have to spend any money on a hardware RAID card.

 

How much RAM does your N54L have? With the latest FreeNAS you need at least 8GB.