Installation guide
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Intel PRO 1000 adapters
SCSI Adapter, Fibre Channel Adapter, or Internal RAID Controller
One or more of the following controllers (any combination can be used):
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Basic SCSI controllers are Adaptec Ultra-160 and Ultra-320, LSI Logic Fusion-MPT, and most
NCR/Symbios SCSI controllers.
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Fibre Channel, see the Hardware Compatibility Guide at http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility.
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RAID adapters supported are HP Smart Array, Dell Perc (Adaptec RAID and LSI MegaRAID), and IBM
(Adaptec) ServeRAID controllers.
Installation and Storage
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SCSI disk, Fibre Channel LUN, or RAID LUN with unpartitioned space. In a minimum configuration, this
disk or RAID is shared between the service console and the virtual machines.
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For hardware iSCSI, a disk attached to an iSCSI controller, such as the QLogic qla405x. Software iSCSI is
not supported for booting or installing ESX.
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Serial attached SCSI (SAS).
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For Serial ATA (SATA), a disk connected through supported SAS controllers or supported on-board SATA
controllers. SATA disk drives connected behind supported SAS controllers or supported on-board SATA
controllers.
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Supported SAS controllers include:
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LSI1068E (LSISAS3442E)
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LSI1068 (SAS 5)
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IBM ServeRAID 8K SAS controller
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Smart Array P400/256 controller
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Dell PERC 5.0.1 controller
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Supported on-board SATA controllers include:
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Intel ICH9
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Nvidia MCP55
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ServerWorks HT1000
When installing ESX on SATA drives, consider the following:
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Ensure that your SATA drives are connected through supported SAS controllers or supported onboard
SATA controllers.
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NOTE ESXi does not support using local, internal SATA drives on the host server to create VMFS
datastores that are shared across multiple ESXi hosts.
ATA and IDE disk drives – ESX supports installing and booting on either an ATA drive or ATA RAID is
supported, but ensure that your specific drive controller is included in the supported hardware. IDE drives
are supported for ESX installation and VMFS creation.
vSphere Upgrade Guide
28 VMware, Inc.