



The LSI MegaRAID SAS 9260-8i RAID controller offers a new level of flexibility and performance to servers and workstations by supporting both high-performance SAS hard drives and cost-effective, high-capacity SATA drives, as well as energy-efficient SSDs. Supporting RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50 and 60, it can not only backup data but can also extend the storage capacity of a system significantly.
It supports ultra fast bus speeds at PCI-Express 2.0 X8 and offers complete connectivity with two internal mini-SAS connectors. Using an industry-leading RAID on Chip (ROC) processor and 512MB of DDR2 write cache, this high-performance PCIe-to-SAS RAID host adapter delivers enterprise-class performance for mission critical server applications.
SAS 6Gb/s Compliant
The LSI MegaRAID SAS 9260-8i supports both 6Gb/s SAS and previous-generation SAS/SATA hard drives, enabling new levels of server storage scalability, performance and reliability.
RAID Support
The LSI MegaRAID SAS 9260-8i supports multi-level RAID configuration including RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50 and 60 for better performance, enhanced data security and flexible capacity upgrades.
PCI Express 2.0 x8 Interface
The LSI MegaRAID SAS 9260-8i features a PCI Express 2.0 x8 interface to provide fast signaling for high-bandwidth applications.
Pros: Works out of the box with ESXi 5.0. Raid 10 with 8 drives that typically read/write at 90mb/s is reading and writing around 450mb/s. Fast! Comes with long cables that take care of your needs. You can attach your own LED's to the pins on the card to monitor activity, failures and cache. Battery available as a separate purchase to keep your write-back cache safe... buy the battery! Without using the write-back cache, your performance will drop significantly... up to 75% from what I've read. You can enable write-back without one, but a power outage will drop your cache data. If this is for a lab, maybe you don't care... but why play with fire? I'd hate to lose my Exchange VM due to the girlfriend plugging in a hair dryer and popping the breaker.
Cons: Sometimes difficult to get into the card after Post. Technical Support wasn't very knowledgeable when I had questions... but they were responsive. Most recent drivers (5.34 as of Nov 3, 2011) for VMWare aren't at the LSI site... you need to go to VMWare's support page and grab this: http://downloads.vmware.com/d/details/dt_esxi50_lsi_2108_v534/dHRAYnRqZWRiZHAlJQ== It's located under "VMware ESXi 5.0 Driver for LSI MegaRAID SAS Controller." The ESXi 5.0 driver includes LSI MegaRAID SAS driver version 5.34. The LSI MegaRAID driver (megaraid_sas) supports products based on the 2108 and 2208 SAS ROC family.
Overall Review: While I may have some gripes, the card is amazing. I wouldn't consider shopping around for anything else. I just had to do a little extra leg work, but that's not a big deal. I'm using this with an ASUS P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 Motherboard. I think that remember people saying that this card has problems with certain mobo's... while this combo definitely works for me, it does act a little strange sometimes... the difficulty getting into the card after Post is what I'm getting at... I think that has something to do with the Mobo. Obviously, it's not a big issue since I've got it working no problem... and I would imagine that bios updates will fix this issue in the very near future. The mobo is brand new, and I really like it, but it has room to grow.