Poweredge R510 and ESXi 4.1

Hey guys. Ok in need of some help here. We just purchased/received a new PE R510 that we are/were planning to install VMWare ESXi (free) version on. Well come to find out when we ordered it, we configured it to include the PERC s300 SAS controller. Come to find out now, Linux kernel OS' don't recognize software based controllers, so needless to say we might be screwed.
Has anyone encountered this before? Is there a possible work around so we can use the current configuration? I know I could run Hyper-V on it but I'm sure my boss will want to stick with ESXi since our other VM's run on that core. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Has anyone encountered this before? Is there a possible work around so we can use the current configuration? I know I could run Hyper-V on it but I'm sure my boss will want to stick with ESXi since our other VM's run on that core. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
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Comments
You can try, not sure if it will work, but after installing ESXi embedded, create the RAID and see if you can present the datastore to ESXi within the VI Client.
This is in our test lab so using a SAN really won't do us any good. I'm already working on obtaining a PERC 6i card.
If its just a lab then a 2008 Server with free iSCSI target would do
From what all I can find I see no reason why the H700's would have a problem with the "free" version of ESXi 4.1, but wanted to see if any of you have in fact installed ESXi 4.1 on a box with the H700 controller card.
Great way to find out compatibility, is the VMware Compatibility Guide . I've had Dell tell me a certain network card would work, and didn't - so always double check with VMware.
I did check it and I "think" the combination will work - however the HCL doesn't say anything about controller cards....
Edit: Ok I found how to check the IO Devices. Yes the PERC H700 Integrated shows compatible with ESXi 4.1