Open Source Home VM Server help and advise

I saw this but it doesn't apply to ESXi, from the comments on that page:
"We are running ESXi which after much searching of the menus and researching other websites, I found out that ESXi does not have the menu option for LVM.EnableResignature. Out of desperation, I decided to go ahead and choose the option to "Create a datastore". As I walked through the process, before it actually created a new datastore, it found the existing datastore and recreated the reference to it. Note that it never got to the point where it wanted to format the drive so we didn't loose anything."

I tried this too but I can't progress past the second screen where it can't find a disc for the datastore

 

Got it working again!

I switched the SATA cable and port (from 6Gb/s to a 3Gb/s not sure if that mattered).

 

Sometimes motherboard use different chipsets for 6 and 3 gig sata. It could be that that the 6 gbps sata chipset on your board is not properly supported in esxi. Basically if it isn't on the HCL then it isn't gaurenteed to work.

As a side note i figured i would post my current configuration as it has been working well so far.

I use a dedicated SAN and a VM Host running ESXi 5.1 (free license)

Hardware Configs
=============

SAN

3x2TB WD Red
1x2TB WD Green
2x 60GB Laptop HDD
Antec Earthwatts 380W PSU
Supermicro Intel Atom D525 based matx board
Norco Supermicro RPC-230
8GB DDR2 SODIMM

HOST

Intel Xeon E3-1230 V2
Supermicro X9SCL/X9SCM
16GB DDR3 ECC
Intel i340-t4 Quad Port Nic
Onboard Intel Nic (board has 2 but only one is supported in ESXi)
Antec Earthwatts 380W
Norco RPC-230

Currently i don't use any local storage or usb keys to boot my host server. The nic on my motherboard supports the mapping of an iSCSI lun during post and it boots from that.

I currently have my primary firewall virtualized which is awesome as well as a host of servers.

As for SAN i use nexenta as it is a enterprise grade SAN operating system that fits my needs perfectly (free up to 18TB)

If anyone else is considering using iSCSI it is extremely important you either directly attach to the SAN or have a dedicated iSCSI switch. (vlan is not sufficient) other wise you run the risk of performance issues and possible data corruption due to non-serialized packets.

just my several 2 cents