ESXi 6.5 on Dell R710 with JBOD, VMWare unable to see JBOD drives

[ortoch]

So I have a Dell R710 running the following...

ESXi 6.5
Dual 6 core processors 3.33Ghz
116GB RAM
Broadcom NetXtreme Ethernet Boot Agent
PowerEdge Expandable RAID Controller BIOS, PERC H700 Integrated FW=12.0.1-0091

JBOD Setup
8 Bay JBOD connected with eSata to R710
Asmedia 106x SATA Controller Ver 3.30A AHCI Mode
8x HGST HUS724040ALA640 Drives (HGST Ultrastar 7K4000 HUS724040ALA640 (0F14688) 4TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Enterprise Hard Drive Bare Drive)


When I boot the server the BIOS sees the eSATA PCIe card and all 8 4TB drives. If I enter the RAID Utility it does NOT see the drives though it only sees the 8x 300GB 2.5" drives in the front of the unit plugged into the backplane. When I get into VMware ESXi 6.5 I can see the eSata controller but if I go to expand the current datastore it sees no drives. If I go into Host>Manage>Hardware it sees the PCIe eSata Controller and says SR-IOV = Not capable and Passthrough = Disabled.

I tried changing the bios to UEFI and had no change at all.

I then ssh'd into the ESXi server and ran the following which also shows ESXi sees the disks (sort of???)

[root@localhost:~] ls -alh /vmfs/devices/disks
total 11906890493
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 512 Sep 24 15:22 .
drwxr-xr-x 13 root root 512 Sep 24 15:22 ..
-rw------- 1 root root 1.9T Sep 24 15:22 naa.6a4badb02839e100215990ad090cc94f
-rw------- 1 root root 4.0M Sep 24 15:22 naa.6a4badb02839e100215990ad090cc94f:1
-rw------- 1 root root 4.0G Sep 24 15:22 naa.6a4badb02839e100215990ad090cc94f:2
-rw------- 1 root root 1.9T Sep 24 15:22 naa.6a4badb02839e100215990ad090cc94f:3
-rw------- 1 root root 250.0M Sep 24 15:22 naa.6a4badb02839e100215990ad090cc94f:5
-rw------- 1 root root 250.0M Sep 24 15:22 naa.6a4badb02839e100215990ad090cc94f:6
-rw------- 1 root root 110.0M Sep 24 15:22 naa.6a4badb02839e100215990ad090cc94f:7
-rw------- 1 root root 286.0M Sep 24 15:22 naa.6a4badb02839e100215990ad090cc94f:8
-rw------- 1 root root 2.5G Sep 24 15:22 naa.6a4badb02839e100215990ad090cc94f:9
-rw------- 1 root root 3.6T Sep 24 15:22 t10.ATA_____HGST_HUS724040ALA640__________________________PN1334PCGE4EWS
-rw------- 1 root root 51.2M Sep 24 15:22 t10.ATA_____HGST_HUS724040ALA640__________________________PN1334PCGE4EWS:1
-rw------- 1 root root 3.6T Sep 24 15:22 t10.ATA_____HGST_HUS724040ALA640__________________________PN1334PCGE4EWS:2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 72 Sep 24 15:22 vml.0100000000202020202020504e313333345043474534455753484753542048 -> t10.ATA_____HGST_HUS724040ALA640__________________________PN1334PCGE4EWS
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 74 Sep 24 15:22 vml.0100000000202020202020504e313333345043474534455753484753542048:1 -> t10.ATA_____HGST_HUS724040ALA640__________________________PN1334PCGE4EWS:1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 74 Sep 24 15:22 vml.0100000000202020202020504e313333345043474534455753484753542048:2 -> t10.ATA_____HGST_HUS724040ALA640__________________________PN1334PCGE4EWS:2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 36 Sep 24 15:22 vml.02000000006a4badb02839e100215990ad090cc94f504552432048 -> naa.6a4badb02839e100215990ad090cc94f
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 38 Sep 24 15:22 vml.02000000006a4badb02839e100215990ad090cc94f504552432048:1 -> naa.6a4badb02839e100215990ad090cc94f:1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 38 Sep 24 15:22 vml.02000000006a4badb02839e100215990ad090cc94f504552432048:2 -> naa.6a4badb02839e100215990ad090cc94f:2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 38 Sep 24 15:22 vml.02000000006a4badb02839e100215990ad090cc94f504552432048:3 -> naa.6a4badb02839e100215990ad090cc94f:3
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 38 Sep 24 15:22 vml.02000000006a4badb02839e100215990ad090cc94f504552432048:5 -> naa.6a4badb02839e100215990ad090cc94f:5
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 38 Sep 24 15:22 vml.02000000006a4badb02839e100215990ad090cc94f504552432048:6 -> naa.6a4badb02839e100215990ad090cc94f:6
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 38 Sep 24 15:22 vml.02000000006a4badb02839e100215990ad090cc94f504552432048:7 -> naa.6a4badb02839e100215990ad090cc94f:7
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 38 Sep 24 15:22 vml.02000000006a4badb02839e100215990ad090cc94f504552432048:8 -> naa.6a4badb02839e100215990ad090cc94f:8
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 38 Sep 24 15:22 vml.02000000006a4badb02839e100215990ad090cc94f504552432048:9 -> naa.6a4badb02839e100215990ad090cc94f:9


At my wits end here with this thing any advice would be appreciated.
HGST Ultrastar 7K4000 HUS724040ALA640 (0F14688) 4TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Enterprise Hard Drive Bare Drive

 

[DR_Luke]

What is your end game here? Are you trying to setup the server, fix the server or recover the data?

 

[ortoch]

What is your end game here? Are you trying to setup the server, fix the server or recover the data?

I am setting up the server I have ESXi 6.5 running live on the R710 now with an Ubuntu 16.04 VM running all my media server software I just need to get the JBOD connected in some fashion to this damn server so that I can use it for storing all my media.

I will add that I brought the JBOD up this morning after working on this all day yesterday and thought I should wipe the drives clean with my windows enviroment. Plugged it in and it recognized all 8 drives with the USB 3.0 connection and I was able to wipe all 8 clean of all data. When I returned it back to the server via eSATA the server did again like above just see one of the 8 drives but this time VCenter was able to use the drive. It was progress of sorts but not sure its in the right direction.

 

[ortoch]

What is your end game here? Are you trying to setup the server, fix the server or recover the data?

I am setting up the server I have ESXi 6.5 running live on the R710 now with an Ubuntu 16.04 VM running all my media server software I just need to get the JBOD connected in some fashion to this damn server so that I can use it for storing all my media.

I will add that I brought the JBOD up this morning after working on this all day yesterday and thought I should wipe the drives clean with my windows enviroment. Plugged it in and it recognized all 8 drives with the USB 3.0 connection and I was able to wipe all 8 clean of all data. When I returned it back to the server via eSATA the server did again like above just see one of the 8 drives but this time VCenter was able to use the drive. It was progress of sorts but not sure its in the right direction.