x9SRL-F Supermicro

[ABev]

I've been beating up my server for several weeks going through this and other forums with no luck. So I figured I'd try and get some specific feedback.

I have a Supermicro X9SRL-F MOBO v3.0a running AMI BIOS v 2.15.1236 and acting as an ESXi v5.5 Host.

- FreeNAS v9.3 is running as a VM
- ESXi shows the Patsburg SATA controller is running in passthrough mode.
- Four 1TB drives are attached to the Patsburg
- The drives are NOT configured for RAID
- all of the VM memory is reserved (locked)
- BIOS has VT-D enabled

PROBLEM: the drives do not show up in FreeNAS.

Questions:
- Is it your experience that the problem of drives not showing up in FeeNAS a MOBO issue, a FreeNAS issue, a BIOS issue, or an ESXi v5.5 issue?
- Have you run across this problem of drives not showing up and what was your particular resolution?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Ericloewe]

- ESXi shows the Patsburg SATA controller is running in passthrough mode.

Yeah, that kind of thing tends not to work very well. LSI SAS controllers do work as expected, but PCH SATA controllers are a bit finicky.

 

[ABev]

Well..... crap. I'll start looking for an LSI SAS controller that I might be able to stick in the host server.

Though... I see that some folks have found that ESXi 5.1 worked with Patsburg, v5.5 kinda lost its Patsburg support, and v6.x seems to support Patsburg. Decisions decisions, upgrade, purchase more HW, scrap the project, go for a run, walk the dog.....