Some ASUS mobo experiences with ESX & ESXi

I was using an ASUS P5WDG2-WS Pro and it worked with the ICH7R in SATA AHCI mode (RAID mode worked as well but ESXi treated the disks as JBOD).

I replaced the motherboard with an ASUS P5K WS and it would not work with the onboard SATA at all in any mode.

Now here's the weird bit.  I specifically bought an old, second-hand P5WDG2-WS Pro as it has two PCI-X slots.  One for my Intel dual-port nic and one for my Adaptec 2130SLP as i wanted RAID1 for my production VM's (i tested the onboard SATA before i put in my 2130SLP & SCSI drives).  When i replaced the P5WDG2 with the P5K WS (one PCI-X slot) using the same hardware I could not use the ICH9R onboard SATA in any mode.  Once i reconnected my SCSI setup, as i was not going to use the on-board SATA anyway, the installer would hang on loading AACRAID-30 and neither ESX 3.5 U2 nor ESXi 3.5 U2 or 3 could see the storage (2130SLP & 4 SCSI drives) when the installer finally timed out.  I can understand why the SATA was good on one but not the other as the chipsets are different but why would the Adaptec 2130SLP in the PCI-X slot work on one but not the other?  I've now gone back to the P5WDG2 Pro WS now with my SCSI subsystem.

ASUS DSBF-D12/SAS Dual LGA 771 Intel 5000P SSI EEB 3.61 Server Motherboard

This board comes with an Intel SATA Raid controller and a LSI SAS Raid controller. ESXi recognizes both controllers, however it does not see the Raid configuration of the Intel controller. If you mirror your drives, ESXi will see them as 2 single drives. ESXi does recognize the Raid configiuration on the LSI SAS Raid controller. However, this controller does not support Raid 5. It supports a standard mirror, enhanced mirror and striping, but not Raid 5. I installed (4) 1TB SATA drives and set them up as an enhanced mirror on the LSI controller. ESXi sees 2TB, which is what it should see. ESXi supports the dual GB NICs on this board as well. I've only had this board for a few days, but it seems to perform well.

VirtualSlew, I am evaluating DSBF-D12/SAS and wanted to check with you about onboard SAS LSI 1068 controller, so please correct me if wrong. The onboard SAS controller works in raid mode with ESXi but only in raid 0, 1 or 10, correct?

Thanks in advance!!

I have tested a P5E WS PRO motherboard on ESX 4.0 and it crashes. These motherboards are no good for vmware. If you got it working, please let me know.