Adaptec 2405 4-Port SAS/SATA RAID Controller - 2260200-R
PCI Express x8 - 300 MBps - 1 x36-pin SFF-8087 SAS 300 - Serial Attached SCSI Internal

I bought this card for a couple reasons: 1. It is one of the lesser expensive true hardware RAID cards 2. It is supported natively in VMware ESXi 3. Has a low profile faceplate mount I also got a good deal with a first time buying coupon with Buy.com AND free shipping which made this a steal. HOWEVER, I can only give this 4 stars as it does NOT support the current CIM monitoring in ESXi. I have learned this is because Adaptec has not been proactive in getting their driver working with CIM in VMWare ESX. This is quite sad as the health monitoring of the RAID is just as important as the RAID itself. Without the monitoring how would I ever know a drive has failed short of looking at the server front? I will keep this card though and put it to other use (Linux / Windows) which has a driver and can use the Adaptec software to monitor the RAID status. I did some pretty plain speed tests using Linux dd and was getting around 220 - 260 MB/s write using 4 x Velociraptors in RAID 10.
 
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Bought two of these both as alternatives to the on board Gigabyte RAID controllers which were troublesome to install. Tried a Highpoint controller that I never could get to work. These Adaptecs both setup perfectly first time in Win XP Pro, are extremely fast in PCIe 8x slots running two 500G striped Hitachi drives RAID 0. No muss no fuss just performance. Only gripe is first one came with cables and the second did not have them, but was at a lower price. Only other quibble is no RAID 5. Why this is missing is odd as comparable controllers almost all have this feature. But these are great fast controllers and take the hassle out of setup. Just work,-what a concept!
 
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