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The LSI documentation is pretty bad for some things and since the change to Avago has incorrect information and non-intuitive driver research. Like this issue experienced in this thread. If you were to search the Avago site for the LSI 9260-8i card and look at the latest drivers for ESXi 5.5 and 6.0 you will see the following text document,
"The certified driver package 6.609.08.00-1 legacy and 6.609.07.00-1 is downloadable from the vmware web site for
6.609.08.00-1
ESXi 5.5 Legacy driver
ESXi 6.0 Legacy driver
6.609.0700-1
ESXi 5.5 Native driver Invader only
ESXi 6.0 Native driver Invader only
Please download from this location. A free vmware.com account is required to login and download."
There are two things wrong with the text document. One is that they are obviously revered in their descriptions. The SCSI-MEGARAID-SAS drivers are the legacy drivers and the LSI-MR3 drivers are the newer Native drivers. Second is that you just searched for LSI 9260-8i drivers (a 2108 LSI Controller). Why are they giving you a link to a 3108 chip card?
Here are the LSI chip internal naming conventions I know of,
LSI MegaRAID SAS-3 3108 [Invader]
LSI MegaRAID SAS-3 3008 [Fury]
LSI MegaRAID SAS 2208 [Thunderbolt]
LSI MegaRAID SAS 2108 [Liberator
LSI MegaRAID SAS 2008 [Falcon]
LSI MegaRAID SAS 2004 [Spitfire]
LSI MegaRAID SAS 1068 [Verde ZCR]
The latest 2108 Chip Driver I could find on the VMware website was megaraid_sas-6.602.55.00-1645739.zip using Google search, though the OEM legacy driver (OEM drivers always have the highest use precedence over Native and legacy - ESXi 5.5 introduces a new Native Device Driver Architecture Part 2 | virtuallyGhetto ) I am using is scsi-megaraid-sas: 6.603.55.00-1OEM.550.0.0.1331820. I haven't tried the LSI-SCSI-MEGARAID-SAS-66090700-1OEM driver yet but it seems that there is no Native ESXi driver (not using a vmklinux shim module) for the LSI 2108 cards.
So it is a little bit of a pain in the butt to determine what the proper driver is. If you try to use the Native driver with a 2108 LSI controller the datastores will not show up in vSphere. I think your advice of " if I do not know something, I do not use it." is a rather poignant in this case and great advice.
PS
The SMIS driver which provides the Storage health to ESXi via CIM is completely different from the controller driver. The latest SMIS for the 9260-8i card does work well so far and is universal to many of the LSI controllers. It is version 500.04.V0.57-0007.
~ # esxcli software vib list
Name Version Vendor Acceptance Level Install Date
----------------------------- ------------------------------------ ------ ---------------- ------------
lsiprovider 500.04.V0.57-0007 LSI VMwareAccepted 2015-11-10
scsi-megaraid-sas 6.603.55.00-1OEM.550.0.0.1331820 LSI VMwareCertified 2014-05-10