i saw in the article on using vmware esxi passthrough of a raid controller that it was being installed on a virtual machine called nexentavm. did passthrough work on nexenta in a virtual machine?
i have have added a part 2 of my mini Howo:I use NexentaCore, no 18 TB limit but no built in admin UI. If you mind the lack of UI you can try napp-it. Personally I thought the lack of UI would be a problem, but now I'm actually happy I chosen to not use any. Just create a few common scripts in your home dir (stuff like createshare etc...) and SSH becomes faster than using any fancy Web interface.
ciao
Alberto