Top products from r/Xpenology
We found 2 product mentions on r/Xpenology. We ranked the 2 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
1. StarTech.com 4 Port PCI Express 2.0 SATA III 6Gbps RAID Controller Card with HyperDuo SSD Tiering - PCIe SATA 3 Controller Adapter (PEXSAT34RH)
Sentiment score: 0
Number of reviews: 1
Add 4 Internal SATA III (6Gbps) Ports to a computer through a PCI Express x2 slotPCI Express 2.0 SATA Controller with HyperDuo SSD Tiering4 Port PCI Express SATA III 6GbMaximize system capability with SATA III connection speeds4 AHCI SATA III (6Gbps) ports through PCI Express x2
Show Reddit reviews2. Cable Matters Internal Mini SAS to SATA Cable (SFF-8087 to SATA Forward Breakout) 1.6 Feet
Sentiment score: 1
Number of reviews: 1
INTERNAL MINI SAS DATA CABLE connects a RAID or PCIe controller with an SFF-8087 port to 4 discrete SATA drives; Mini SAS to SATA adapter provides reliable internal connectivity between a Serial attached SCSI controller card in a computer system and direct attached storage devices with a SATA connec...
Show Reddit reviews
Use your on-board SATA controller for the drive(s) where the VMs will be stored. I have two SSDs in mine since I have a dozen VMs. These drives will show up in the ESXi storage module.
For "raw access" you will need a separate drive controller (aka HBA=host bus adapter) for the disks you want Xpenology to use for its storage pool. This separate drive controller will show up in ESXi and you enable "passthrough" in the hardware configuration screen. After you do this, the separate drive controller can be added during configuration of the XPE VM as an additional "PCI Device" and all drives connected to this controller will show up in XPE after DSM boots. ESXi will have no visibility to these drives at all. Configured this way the drives behave as if they were in an actual Synology box.
There are caveats however since not all drive controllers can be passed and not all seem to be compatible with Jun's bootloader. There are various LSI models that most people use, with 9211-8i being one of the more popular ones. There are third party cards (such as Dell and IBM) that are the same as the 9211-8i and can use its firmware. Secondly, the card needs to be flashed from IR mode to IT mode which basically disables the built-in RAID function and presents the drives as a JBOD. Here is one example of how to flash an LSI 9211-8i into IT mode: https://nguvu.org/freenas/Convert-LSI-HBA-card-to-IT-mode/
You can also purchase preflashed cards on ebay. Do a search for "9211 it mode" and you'll find many listed. You should be able to grab one for $35-40. I personally use a Dell H310.
The 9211-8i has two SFF-8087 ports, each which supports 4 drives. Use a cable like this which has a standard SATA connector: https://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-Internal-SFF-8087-Breakout/dp/B018YHS8BS
Go here for info on how to configure XPE on ESXi: https://xpenology.com/forum/forum/50-dsm-6x/
There are also many Youtube videos available that shows how to configure XPE in ESXi.
Side note: Now that I've done some searches on RDM, I recall that my issue was that RDM was greyed out as an option for me. Maybe it will work fine for you, but the passthrough method is the recommended way. It's also used for other platforms like FreeNAS and unRAID.
StarTech.com 4 Port PCI Express 2.0 SATA III 6Gbps RAID Controller Card with HyperDuo SSD Tiering - PCIe SATA 3 Controller Adapter https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00BUC3N74/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_PoW8BbP01KY5E
I live in London