Anyone know of a Cheap ESXi compatible PCI-E SATA controller?

WILD9 · 22 Jan 2012 at 14:15

I'm throwing together an ESXi box and the board I have has unsupported SATA (I've tried it, it doesn't work). Does anyone know of a cheap as you like PCI-E SATA controller that would work? Preferably half height, not bothered about raid and most importantly cheap as chips (as in less than £20). Its purely for messing around with at home so whitebox compatibility is fine.

WILD9 · 22 Jan 2012 at 18:31

Ringiho said:
Is the SATA controller set to IDE mode? ESXi can be pretty pretty in some cases with RAID but non-RAID is sometimes do-able.

I have unfortunately tried that. the board is a Zotac GF9300-KE ITX Board, It has several disk controller modes IDE, AHCI, AHCI Linux. Unfortunately it wont recognise any of them.

WILD9 · 22 Jan 2012 at 21:22

Ringiho said:
It was worth a try I suppose!

Give this page a look: http://www.vm-help.com//esx40i/esx40_whitebox_HCL.php

Yeah that page is great unfortunately all the controllers it lists are either PCI or £100 +

WILD9 · 23 Jan 2012 at 12:26

LizardKing said:
No software raid card will work.
Your best bet would be a dell perc 5, should be able to pick one up for around ~£50

Im not after raid, I'm after a simple sata controller for 1 disk. There are plenty of these that work in ESXi with direct disk access and are cheap but they are almost exclusively PCI. I'm hopeing someone has some experience with a PCI-E card.