Storage/VMWare Lab

[Fzdog2]

Build’s Name: JEDSERVER
Operating System/ Storage Platform: Windows Server 2012 Essentials / ESXi 5.1
CPU: Xeon E5-2620 6c/12t
Motherboard: Asus Z9PE-D16
Chassis: Supermicro 846TQ-R900B Chassis
Drives: 128GB OCZ Vertex 4(BOOT), 3x1TB WD Green, 3TB WD Green, 3TB Hitachi 7200RPM, 3TB Toshiba 7200RPM
RAM: 6x4GB Kingston ECC DDR3
Add-in Cards: LSI 9211-4i
Power Supply: OCZ Fatality 1000W Gold Modular

Usage Profile: Currently powers my home domain for PC backups. I have Plex Media Server installed for streaming at home and over the internet (basically my own personal Netflix). I have a 50TB thin provision storage spaces pool setup with 3x1TB and 2x3TB drives providing disk space.

Other information…
I'm currently studying to take VMWare's VCP5 certification exam, so once in awhile I put in an ESXi 5.1 USB disk and lab some vCenter between this and some Workstation ESXi virtual nodes. I am thinking of ordering 2x extra spicy 2665's for a nice 16c/32t machine, but currently do not have the need for that much power.

I added the Supermicro 16 Pin breakout cable to run the power button and activity lights since it is not a Supermicro motherboard anymore.

 

[Patrick]

We need to get you a second CPU!

 

[Fzdog2]

Yeah if there were only $50 2620's floating around...

 

[Fzdog2]

Well, I've scratched the Server 2012 Essentials install and put ESXi 5.1 on the onboard USB. The local datastore is a Sandisk V300 240GB SSD. My question to all of you is how to setup the storage disks for passthrough to a ZFS VM? My storage hardware is:
1x 9211-4i IT flashed
1x 9750-4i (no IT mode)
1x C602 6 SATA ports
1x C602 4 SATA SCU ports
and the drives are 3x3TB, 3x1TB, 3x146GB 10k SAS, 2x32GB SSD's for ZIL/L2ARC etc.

One problem I'm having is getting the 9211 to pass through to FreeNAS:

Without the controller attached, the VM boots just fine. But add the card and it infinitely hangs at this.

Unfortunately my chassis is 24 SATA ports instead of a built in expander so I'm limited to using the available ports listed above.
I'm not necessarily going for an AIO build, I could use the 9750 and the SAS disks as local ESXi storage and pass the 9211 and the C202 ports through to Freenas.

What are some other configs that maybe I'm not thinking of?