Looking for Recommendation on specific SAS Controller under ESXI 7.0U3

[Anon]

Hi everyone,

 

TLDR: Anyone have a ESXI 7.0U3 with a SAS Controller they successfully passed through to Unraid and use?

 

Situation:

• I have been having problems with 2 PCIE Sata Controllers
  • Once I add a disk to a wrong Port on the card it causes the ESXI Host zu Crash once Preclearing / Parity Check starts.
  • Experimenting with switching to the other PCIE Sata Controller caused multiple Errors on the disks connected to the same controller that nearly caused a full loss of a disk as unraid marked the disk defective and couldn't emulate it (Filesystem Error). But again only once preclearing was running for a while on one of those disks. Before that all seemed fine and manual mounting and copying of data ran fine.
• Because of that I am looking to finally set my ESXI up correctly and use a supported PCIE SAS Controller that I can pass right through to Unraid.
• I do not mind spending a bit more on the Controller to get a officially supported and tested model that will not cause immediate huge headaches for me.

Plan:

• Pass through a supported PCIE SAS Controller directly to Unraid
• Have at least 8 Sata Ports / 2 SAS Ports on that Controller (more preferrable)

Requirements:

• Compatability with ESXI 7.0U3 (e.g. https://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php?deviceCategory=io&details=1&partner=5_bpartner&releases=578&page=1&display_interval=500&sortColumn=Partner&sortOrder=Asc)
• Compatibility with Unraid
• Run in IT Mode / Mode that enabled Unraid to manage them as individual disks without any RAID or the like

Info I collected so far:

• Each SAS Port can be used with a breakout cable that converts it into 4 Sata ports
• LSI Branded SAS Controllers are preferrable for Unraid
• There might be problems with needing to flash the Firmware. But I couldn't find a exact example of a card listed in the ESXI 7.0U3 compatibility list and having a Unraid User use it within Unraid without problems.

Questions:

• Is anyone running ESXI 7.0U3 with a SAS Controller?
• If so which one are you using?
• If you had to flash your card do you have a link to the Flashing process & Firmware files you used?
• Anything else I should be wary about?

[Anon]

Heyo,

 

after more ressearch on my own I ended up selecting the following Controller: Broadcom LSI 9300-16i (https://docs.broadcom.com/doc/12353308)

I got it from ebay where it came preflashed in IT-Mode (https://www.ebay.de/itm/134141912239)

 

LSI 9300-8i was listed here: https://wiki.unraid.net/Hardware_Compatibility and the 16i is technically just 2 8i on one card (also shows up as 2 controller)

Also it shows up unter the ESXI 7.0U3 Compataibility list: https://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php?deviceCategory=io&details=1&partner=5_bpartner&releases=578&page=1&display_interval=500&sortColumn=Partner&sortOrder=Asc

 

Installing was very simple. I shut down my ESXI, added this controller, booted up.

All Drives connected to the SAS Controller where showing.

Set both 8i controllers to passthrough (getting an error that basically just meant I have to restart for it to take affect)

restarted

Gave my Unraid Server access to both controller

Booted it and it was happy.

 

 

Now I finally do not have to work with the tedium of vhd pointers to the physical disk that then get passed to the Unraid Server and those pesky SATA PCIe Cards that caused my server to crash when too many disks where added. Currently server is running strong for 24+ hours and the Disk that used to cause crashes on the server seems to be happily preclearing. If anything does happen I will update this.

 

I hope this follow up helps anyone who comes across this in the future