Hi,

As a test of the Opteron processor family, I bought a HP DL385 G7 6128 with HP Smart Array P410i Controller - no memory.

The machine has 20GB ram
2x146GB 15k rpm SAS + 2x250GB SATA2, both in Raid 1 configurations.
I run Vmware ESXi 4.1.

Problem:
Even with one virtual machine only, tried Linux 2.6/Windows server 2008/Windows 7, the VMs' feel really sluggish. With windows 7, the vmware converter installation even timed out. Tried both SATA and SAS disks and SATA disks are nearly unsusable, while SAS disks feels extremely slow.

I can't see a lot of disk activity in the infrastructure client, but I haven't been looking for causes or even tried diagnostics because I have a feeling that it's either because of the cheap raid controller - or simply because of the lack of memory for it.

Despite the problems, I continued and installed a virtual machine that serves a key function, so it's not easy to take it down and run diagnostics.
Would very much like to know what you guys have to say of it, is it more likely to be a problem with the controller/disks or is it low performance because of budget components?

Thanks in advance,