I finally got the vSphere 5.1 server up and running with VT-D but things are not going well, in fact I am getting quite scared about my data now. I notice when I rebooted that some of my drives dropped out, then I rebooted again they were there. Now I got a ton of write errors today with a drive, but then the drive passed all the testing through Western Digital. An hour later another drive dropped out, it says there is no partition and needs formatting. I know my cards are good, I have had no issues, the server has been running for a year with no problems. The only thing in the equation different is vSphere and VT-D. I bring it all down, then bring the server back up and now two different drives are not showing.

You sure you got the correct cables?  As in Forward breakout cables so that you can connect your SAS2LP-MV8 to individual drives?  If you are going to a back plane you may need a SFF8087 at both ends or possibly a SFF8087 to SFF8484.

 

I have used all of these Forward breakout cables with my SASLP-MV8s and M1015s:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812200884

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816116098

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816116099

http://www.monoprice.com/products/subdepartment.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10254&cs_id=1025406

 

The monoprice cables are cheap but they feel it as well.  So far only one bad cable.  But that was a monoprice one.

 

It was the strangest thing, the drives dropping out during boot was caused by Int13h being enabled on one card.