ESXI 8 on Dell T420 PowerEdge Server
Dell T420 PowerEdge Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU 1x E5-2450 v2 @ 2.50GHz. 48 GB Memory. 500GB nvme m.2 in PCIE x16 Adapter, PERC 700 raid controller with 8x4TB 3.5" disks. Goal: Boot VMWare ESXI 8.0+ from NVME SSD in PCIE Slot in either BIOS or UEFI mode. ESXI must then be able to recognize the raid controller and virtual disk, and be able to create a datastore from it. Attempts: 1/ BIOS boot mode with GPT partition table: Booted successfully to 8.0U Dell A07 from NVME SSD, but ESXI would not recognize PERC 700 Raid Controller or Virtual Disk. 2/ BIOS boot mode with GPT partition table: Boot from Dell 6.5 ESXI Image, then upgrade to 7.0.3, then to 8.0. Dell 6.5 installer recognized both the NVME and Raid controller VD, great! Installed 6.5, upgraded to 7.0.3, upgraded to 8.0U. System would not boot , seemingly did not want to boot from the NVME in BIOS Mode. 3/ UEFI boot mode with GPT partition table: Boot from Dell 6.5 ESXI Image, then upgrade to...