LSI LSI00112 PCI Express SATA / SAS SAS3041E-R 3Gb/s 4-port IR

Pros: Inexpensive, out-of-the box support for current ESX vi3 builds with SATA drives attached. Whatever your OS is, if it has support for the "megaraid2" driver, then it should work with this controller. You can apply RAID or (faster) NON-RAID firmware ("initiator/target") versions for this card easily from LSI.

Cons: Supported by esx 3i (3.5.0 build 123629) with caveats: Namely, the disk mirror becomes "unsynced" on every third or fourth reboot, and can only be "synced" in the card's bios/setup menu -- A 1TB mirror takes about oh, 8 or 9 hours, to sync with the system offline.

Other Thoughts: I probably had to resync the RAID mirror 3 times in a 48-hour period (even with the most recent driver and firmware available as of 1-31-2009) for no apparent reason. If you have the Windows/Linux raid management tools installed, then you will not have this problem and it's probably otherwise reliable -- There is just no utility/option to resync, rebuild, or repair the array online from within an ESX environment. I decided to forgo the mirroring on this particular system and flash it with the non-RAID firmware, presenting each disk as an individual volume instead....

Pros: This card has worked flawlessly since the day I plugged it in. I've run this card in 2 different systems and both installations were COMPLETELY painless. To be honest, I can't relate to the issues the other reviewers posted. I am running two Seagate Savvio 15K.1 drives in a RAID 0. I consistently get 160MB+/Sec transfer rates.

Cons: I really like this controller. My only nitpick is that it takes a long time to scan the devices at boot up, ~5-7 seconds, but that's nothing new. Every SAS/FC/SCSI controller I've ever seen has the same problem.

Other Thoughts: I use this card on a high performance Desktop PC. MSI P6N diamond Motherboard, Core 2 E6750, (2) Seagate Savvio 15K.1 drives, (2) Cheetah 15K.5 drives, BFG8800GT video card sharing the same PCIe bus as the LSI controller.

Pros: Handles both SAS and SATA drives. Works without any problems on Windows Vista, does not need any drivers or firmware updates. Using two 147GB SAS 15K RPM drives and SATA DVD Writer.

Cons: May be price, since ultra 320 SCSI cards can be purchased for $50.

Other Thoughts: Extremely satisfied and computer is very fast.

Pros: This controller will handle SATA II and SAS drives, which is an enormous flexibility. Will allow inexpensive SATA drives to used as SCSI with high-level OS's like VMWare ESX Server. LSI technical support is excellent.

Cons: The controller needed a firmware upgrade I got here: http://www.lsi.com/storage_home/products_home/host_bus_adapters/sas_hbas/lsisas3041er/index.html

Before the upgrade it did not recognize WD2500KS and WD3200KS drives. After, it worked perfectly.

Other Thoughts: Go here for drivers and firmware:
http://www.lsi.com/storage_home/products_home/host_bus_adapters/sas_hbas/lsisas3041er/index.html

The person posting that this will not work with XP is just flat wrong and that is the nicest way to say it.

Pros: None that I can think of.....

Cons: WILL NOT INTERFACE WITH XP. Support actually advised me to...and I quote: "Set it (NOTE SINGULAR 'it'...the ONE SAS hard drive) up as a mirror raid array so that the system will see IT." I purchased this to run a Seagate Cheeta SAS on my Asus AM2 M2N32 SLI Deluxe board, sporting 4 gig of Corsair memory, with a PNY 7900GS video card. I can see it as LSI Host Adapter card in device manager, as well as the Cheeta drive. Both are accurately reported. However, in the Explorer file directory, the drive is reported as a removable media device, and is unaccessable. When I attempted to put a fresh install of XP one the unit, Win XP reports before the install is finished, that the Host Adapter card has failed the Win XP Logo check, and that it would not function properly. My question is: How can they (LSI) claim Windows compatibility, when this card clearly does not function with Windows?....be it as a storage or production region drive??

Other Thoughts: Documentation is poor to the point of being worthless.

Pros: Comes with both SAS and SATA cables. Good documentation

Cons: Terrible PCI-E functionality. Had compatibility issues on two motherboards. No Vista drivers. Incredible headache overall. Perhaps their PCI-X implementation is a better choice.

Other Thoughts: LSI puts out good products. I have one of their RAID SAS adapters (8408E) and can't complain much. Yet this HBA has been nothing but trouble

Pros: Low price. Comes with nifty SATA+power cables.

Cons: Couldn't detect my Western Digital drives (40GB or 80GB). Performance was poor running RAID 0. dbench marks were only 180MB/sec running FC6 linux. Configuration interface is not very robust.

Other Thoughts: LSI is generally pretty good but should have bought an Arcea for a 4 port SATA controller or went software RAID.