What HW RAID controller to use with Dell Optiplex 330 running vmware esxi 4? I found e.g Adaptec RAID 2405 is ESXi 4 compatible but I'm not sure whether it will work in PCIe 16x slot as I red sometimes desktop PCIe are "graphic card only". Thanks
4 Answers
I'm afraid it'll be a futile search. ESXi is not certified to run on desktops. You'll be much better off if you find a used PowerEdge or Proliant server on Craigslist (thanks to the recession, there are plenty of those being sold by companies going out of business).

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I've never heard of Desktop PCI-E slots being "graphics only". We've got some "servers" at work that are built with desktop boards, and we've put Adaptect cards into them with no issues.
You can pick up a cheap server, I've got a Proliant ML 115 G5 (Quad core Opteron at 2.1GHz, 4GB ECC DDR2), which I bought a year ago for £200 total. With a decent controller (like Adaptec), it could be a nice little virtualisation box.

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"I red sometimes desktop PCIe are "graphic card only"." Yes that has happened to me before.
I have a 3ware 9690SA in a Dell Optiplex 330 right now just to test. I works but only uses 1 pcie lane. I have 2, 15k.5 Seagate SAS drives in RAID 0 and it moves about 200MB per second.