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I run ESXi 5.1.0 (HP version) on HP ProLiant ML310e G8 v2. There are 2 Storage Adapters:

  • Smart Array P222
  • Dynamic Smart Array B120i

Storage Adapters are visible in ESXi/Storage Adapters. Storage Adadpters

I need to use passthrough for B120i. In DirectPath I/O Configuration, all devices except B120i are included. DirectPath I/O

ADD: This idea to pass through was because of a lack of connectors for an additional SATA HDD cage. However, B120i has poor support for ESXi and raid configuration. Because of that, I've decided to use the free external mini-SAS port. This port goes from the external port back to the server case to connect the SATA backplane.

Lukáš Viktora
  • 152

2 Answers2

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Don't do it ;)

PCIe passthrough for storage adapters in ESXi isn't guaranteed to work, and is often a bad choice. I can only think of a small number of situations where it's beneficial (tape drives or something like this). But if the B120i device isn't visible in the dialog, then you don't even have the option to use it. It's probably not compatible.

Can you give a better description of why you need to use passthrough of a RAID controller to a virtual machine?

Community
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ewwhite
  • 201,205
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Dynamic Smart Array B120i performs very poorly on any raid. The same disk array performs more satisfactorily at Smart Array P222. For that reason, I bought an External SAS cable to connect to the internal SATA array.

External SAS cable

Now I am using internal and external SAS connector. The performance of P222 is very good at configuration 4x SAS at raid5 and 4x SATA at raid5.

Lukáš Viktora
  • 152