I recently rebuilt my ESXi 5 box with a new motherboard & cpu (Supermicro X9SCM). I moved my RAID card (LSI 9260-8i) from my old system, with virtual drives intact, directly to the new system. I'm able to boot from the RAID card as before, but once booted ESX doesn't recognize any storage. I can see the card when I run lspci:
but it seems when the driver starts up it doesn't find the device:
2012-01-22T04:53:01.068Z cpu3:2626)Loading module megaraid_sas ...
2012-01-22T04:53:01.071Z cpu3:2626)Elf: 1862: module megaraid_sas has license GPL
2012-01-22T04:53:01.072Z cpu3:2626)module heap: Initial heap size: 8388608, max heap size: 22339584
2012-01-22T04:53:01.072Z cpu3:2626)vmklnx_module_mempool_init: Mempool max 22339584 being used for module: 31
2012-01-22T04:53:01.072Z cpu3:2626)vmk_MemPoolCreate passed for 2048 pages
2012-01-22T04:53:01.072Z cpu3:2626)module heap: using memType 2
2012-01-22T04:53:01.072Z cpu3:2626)module heap vmklnx_megaraid_sas: creation succeeded. id = 0x410016000000
2012-01-22T04:53:01.072Z cpu3:2626)<6>megasas: 00.00.04.32.1vmw Fri. July 16 16:13:02 EST 2010
2012-01-22T04:53:01.072Z cpu3:2626)PCI: driver megaraid_sas is looking for devices
2012-01-22T04:53:01.072Z cpu3:2626)PCI: driver megaraid_sas claimed 0 device
2012-01-22T04:53:01.072Z cpu3:2626)Mod: 4015: Initialization of megaraid_sas succeeded with module ID 31.
2012-01-22T04:53:01.072Z cpu3:2626)megaraid_sas loaded successfully.
Finally resolved by replacing motherboard. It seems the Supermicro X9SCM does not get along well with the LSI 9260 or ESX 5.
Wait,
You had the exact same symptom I had with my LSI 9260-4i, but I'm using the SuperMicro X9SCL+-F-O
You changed the motherboard, kept the same raid card, and the problem went away? Are you sure you didn't add the ESX LSI 5.34 in your process of debugging which solved it?
I did try installing that update, but it didn't help. Downgrading the SuperMicro BIOS to 1.0a got it booting, but there were still other issues with the onboard LAN, extremely slow POST, and random issues with detecting connected drives. Replaced with an Asus P8B-X and everything has been running perfectly since. I also spoke with another individual who'd had the exact same issue, and ended up replacing with a different motherboard as well. So there are at least three of us now who have had problems with that combination of X9SCM, 9260, and ESX 5. I would imagine they could patch the BIOS to fix it, but who knows when they'll get around to it.
Not sure if this thread is still alive but I have a X9SCL+-F-O and LSI 9207-8i and I have the same issues. Can you explain what the ESX LSI 5.34 update is? I googled but didn't get much. Thanks!