Adding a second SCSI controller to a VM ?

[T3Steve]

ESX 3.02 / VC.2.01

I've got a couple of VM's that need 20 or so RDMs. The max device per SCSI controller is 15. The max SCSI controller per VM is 4. How do I add the second controller?

When I power off the VM, go to Edit Settings, Add, the SCSI Device object says (unavailable) The device cannot be added to this Virtual Machine because there are no non-scsi devices available on the host.

Any clues?

[patrickds · Accepted solution]

Adding a scsi device like you are doing is used to map a generic device, like a tape drive, to a VM via pass-through.

To add a new virtual SCSI controller for Vdisks (or RDM), just add a new disk, and when given the opportunity to select the SCSI id for the disk, scroll down in the list until you get SCSI1:0 (you'll see all ids on controller 0 first: SCSI 0:0, SCSI 0:1,.... and so on until 15, and then it will continue with SCSI 1:0....)

This wil add a new controller 1, and put the disk on id0

If you need more than 2 I'm not sure the VI client will give you that option.

You might have to edit the vmx file and add additional SCSI controllers manually.

[T3Steve]

Thanks that was it. The other gotcha was to have the VM powered off when adding the 16th RDM so that a new controller could be added.