Installing ESXi 5.5 sees physical drives not virtual drives

[amsconsult]

Hi guys,

somewhat of a newbie but I have installed ESXi a few times before and have an OK knowledge of server hardware.

I have a server machine that previously had Microsoft 2008 installed that's no longer being used so I thought I'd make good use of it and install ESXi.

The machine has 3 x 250GB and 2 x 2GB disks.

On the machine boot I dutifully press Ctrl-E and configure the 3 drives into 1 x 470GB virtual drive.

However when ESXi 5.5 comes to install it lists the drives in the following order asking me to choose 1:

250GB

2GB

2GB

250GB

250GB

I'm sure I'm doing something really stupid but for the life of me I can't see it.

Anyone have an idea?

Thanks, Steve...

[JarryG · Accepted solution]

You provided no info about your hardware, but I just suppose you used "fake-raid" (or "bios-raid") to create that one virtual drive. This is NOT supported with ESXi. Only true hardware-controllers...

[amsconsult]

Many thanks, that appears to be it.

Steve