I've acquired a Dell PowerEdge R710 server a few days ago, which includes a PERC 6/i RAID controller. The server is now fitted with a SATA SSD, one SAS drive and four SATA HDD's, all of which I would like to be passed through to ESXi in an "as-is" state, without creating any logical drives in the RAID controller.
Now, the ESXi v5.5 installation image I grabbed from the Dell homepage starts just fine but only lists the logical drives and connected flash drives as possible installation targets, not any of the physical drives.
If I create a small logical drive on my SSD (which the PERC 6/i detects as SATA-SSD type), the ESXi install wizard lists the SSD value on that drive as false; which is far from optimal. I have also tried disabling the RAID controller entirely in the setup, but that also did not help. Everything that should enable passthrough is enabled in BIOS, but that shouldn't be a concern at this early stage of the ESXi installation.
How would I be able to install ESXi v5.5 to a part of my SSD that is connected to the storage controller, while giving it entire physical access to the disk (to allow for SMART values to be read etc.)?
Best Answer
You won't be able to bypass the RAID controller here... or at least you shouldn't.
ESXi is a minimal operating system and has a specific list of supported storage controllers and devices. Hardware RAID controllers are the norm for this type of deployment.
Things to note: