I have a special need for a server consolidation which I plan to accomplish using ESXi. The server I will be using as my host has a Sony AIT-1 Turbo drive with an IDE interface. Is it possible to somehow allow pass-through of this device from the host to a single guest VM (not shared access)? I'm trying to avoid putting the tape drive in a workstation and backing up across the network if at all possible.
What if I were to purchase an IDE to SATA adapter and put the tape drive on the SAS controller? SAS is backwards compatible with SATA devices, so I would think it would work from a hardware perspective.
