I have a Dell PowerEdge R610 server for LAB usage. As VMware ESXi 6.7 went end-of-life in October 2022, I decided it was time to upgrade. Instead of going with VMware ESXi 7.x I went straight to ESXi 8.x. The upgrade itself wasn't too difficult, have to workaround some unsupported CPU warnings and remove some VIBs.
But after the upgrade, my datastore is gone. This is seemingly a result of the DELL PERC H700 in the Dell R610 being dropped from the lsi_mr3 native driver. There is also some reference to a Dell-Shared-PERC8 driver, but there is no mention of this for VMware 8.x, just for VMware 7.x, and it seemingly does not support the PERC H700.
Doing some tinkering with the lsi_mr3 to add the hardware ID of the PERC H700 does not seem to work. It seems like the PERC H700, and the LSI SAS 2108 chipset has been dropped entirely for VMware 7.x and onwards.
The easiest thing to do would be to swap my PERC H700 with a PERC H710 like someone else has already done and documented here:
Quite straightforward. Running a PCI-Express 3.0 8x card in the PCI-Express 2.0 8x slot shouldn't result in any issues as I'm still using my existing SAS drives that do not saturate anything as it's running today. The PERC H710 has the same SFF-8087 connector as well, so the existing cable will be plug 'n' play.
But the H710 is not listed on the VMware 8.x HCL. I don't care about the HCL, as this is an older server, and this is for LAB use. But this brings the question, will the H710 work with VMware 8.x or is it limited to VMware 7.x? If that is the case I would much rather pay more for PERC H730 or Lenovo ThinkSystem 530 instead to ensure VMware 8.x is working. But this will be more expensive, requiring me to replace the SFF-8087 cabling or purchase some SFF-8643 to SFF-8088 cables and SFF-8088 to SFF-8087 adapters to reuse the existing cabling. Not something I would prioritise unless it's needed to be able to run VMware 8.x.
The question is whether PERC H710 with LSI SAS 2208 chipset can run on VMware 8.x or not?
But after the upgrade, my datastore is gone. This is seemingly a result of the DELL PERC H700 in the Dell R610 being dropped from the lsi_mr3 native driver. There is also some reference to a Dell-Shared-PERC8 driver, but there is no mention of this for VMware 8.x, just for VMware 7.x, and it seemingly does not support the PERC H700.
Doing some tinkering with the lsi_mr3 to add the hardware ID of the PERC H700 does not seem to work. It seems like the PERC H700, and the LSI SAS 2108 chipset has been dropped entirely for VMware 7.x and onwards.
The easiest thing to do would be to swap my PERC H700 with a PERC H710 like someone else has already done and documented here:
Quite straightforward. Running a PCI-Express 3.0 8x card in the PCI-Express 2.0 8x slot shouldn't result in any issues as I'm still using my existing SAS drives that do not saturate anything as it's running today. The PERC H710 has the same SFF-8087 connector as well, so the existing cable will be plug 'n' play.
But the H710 is not listed on the VMware 8.x HCL. I don't care about the HCL, as this is an older server, and this is for LAB use. But this brings the question, will the H710 work with VMware 8.x or is it limited to VMware 7.x? If that is the case I would much rather pay more for PERC H730 or Lenovo ThinkSystem 530 instead to ensure VMware 8.x is working. But this will be more expensive, requiring me to replace the SFF-8087 cabling or purchase some SFF-8643 to SFF-8088 cables and SFF-8088 to SFF-8087 adapters to reuse the existing cabling. Not something I would prioritise unless it's needed to be able to run VMware 8.x.
The question is whether PERC H710 with LSI SAS 2208 chipset can run on VMware 8.x or not?
Last edited:
