Dell r710 internal SSD (with vCenter)

[brianmat]

I am looking to add internal SSD drive into an r710 so I can utilize the 6 current SSD drives as part of a new Napp-It server. I'm just trying to figure out the best way to do this as my current Velocity Solo PCIe SSD adapter is not being seen by vSphere but it is recognized on boot.

I see a couple of data cables that may work for me. Both 7034k and GP700 may work but I want to see if anyone else has found a good way to handle this.

vSphere does not allow for USB datastores even with an SSD drive, so USB is not an option. Has to be some SATA internal interface or I need to get more expensive and do an external HBA which I am trying to avoid.

 

[mrkrad]

Google how to slipstream the SATA drivers in ESXI 5.5 - or use ESXi 5.1 which comes with sata drivers. The lack of sata drivers in 5.5 is the problemo!

 

[brianmat]

Google how to slipstream the SATA drivers in ESXI 5.5 - or use ESXi 5.1 which comes with sata drivers. The lack of sata drivers in 5.5 is the problemo!

Outstanding! Off to the Google for now. I didn't even to think about checking that because, well, who doesn't include SATA drivers in their OS?

 

[brianmat]

Lucky me. I have an older Velocity Solo adapter card which uses the Marvell chipset. Unfortunately there is a bug with VT-D and the Marvell 88SE91xx chipsets (which this has). Since I need VT-D to passthrough my HBA that kills that idea but just for the moment. It appears the newer Velocity Solo x1 adapters use the Asmedia 1061 chipset which does appear to work. I'll wait for that one to get delivered by Amazon and I should be ok.

For anyone else who ran into this problem my reference site was: VMware Front Experience: How to make your unsupported SATA AHCI Controller work with ESXi 5.5

 

[brianmat]

Well this has sucked. The Marvell chipsets don't work with passthrough and the new Velocity Solo X1 I just received today gives an error during boot of:

Plug & Play Configuration Error:
Option ROM Checksum Error

Then I get the bus slot it's using. Bummer. I'm out of good ideas at this point. The lack of power connections inside of the R710 chassis really puts the brakes on an internal drive. It seems I will just have to use native storage and skip the idea of another AIO with this server.

I did verify that the card works by dropping it into a desktop and checking the drive configuration snap-in. Everything was fine there, so there's something with the Dells.