SATA RAID annoyances
Regularly, since I work with SMEs, I virtualise entry-level servers (as a matter of course for VM portability, easy DR, etc).
In some occasions I find that the hardware vendor has been cheap with their choice of RAID card, providing one that will either not do RAID5 or won't allow you to create RAID partitions on disk subsystems.
This causes a problem with VMware as it's disk usage requirements for install are a bit like Goldilocks - you can't have a disk too small, and you can't have a disk too large, and if you go over either of these boundaries you get VMware either not installing, or installing a default datastore which is a fraction of the size of the underlying disk (like the 1.47Tb datastore in my current 5.47Tb system).
Hence, since I can't do much about VMware, I can do something about the RAID card.
So, what i'm looking for are suggestions for PCI-express SATA RAID cards that provide RAID0/1/5 and the ability to RAID disk partitions rather than the complete disk.....oh and they can't cost more than say £200.
Any ideas?