Notes on Adaptec 5 Series Cards on ESXi

adaptec_arcconf_esxi_trick.txt

I've tried the following configuration on ESXi up to 6.5.0 Update 2 (Build 10719125)
Beware the Adaptec, you can trick their support software into working
with older cards by torturing your whitebox with various old vibs...

But you will NEVER get Maxview Storage Manager to work! NEVER!
Be grateful for ARCCONF, it's all you're getting, Adaptec sucks.

I personally have a ASR-51245, running the latest BIOS available, 18948.
The 5805, 5405, 6405, 6805, etc... should all in theory work with this combo, but if you have a 6 series card, you will have working maxview anyway.
So the trick here is using just the right versions of the drivers, cim providers and arcconf to get this to work, bear with me.
In theory, this should work all the way up to the latest version of 6.7, however in my testing I was not able to verify this.
I know it will work on at least 6.7.0 Release.

Driver
URL: https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/details?downloadGroup=DT-ESXI60-PMC-AACRAID-62141024&productId=491
Filename: aacraid-6.0.6.2.1.41024-2915492.zip
Release Date:  23 July 2015
This is the last driver to support 5 Series cards in any way that could be considered proper.

CIM Provider 
URL: https://storage.microsemi.com/en-us/speed/raid/storage_manager/msm_vmware_v2_02_22404_zip.php
Filename: msm_vmware_v2_02_22404.zip
Release Date: 20 Oct 2016
This is the ONLY cim provider I can find that works.

Arcconf
URL http://download.adaptec.com/raid/storage_manager/arcconf_v2_06_23167.zip
Filename arcconf_v2_06_23167.zip
Release Date 05 Jul 2018
All the recent versions from 2.06.23167 onwards should work.
Maxview will log in and may work intermittently in terms of monitoring, but it is definitely unreliable.

It's best to slipstream the vibs into a ESXi 6.5 ISO or wait until everything in this gist is set up before you create your raid volumes.
If you have issues with dissapearing data stores, you may have to reattach them from the direct management console or SSH, check the vmware support site for for info.

also, don't worry about necroposting, as far as I'm concerned, I put this information out there to help people, if it's no longer helpful, it needs to be fixed, hopefully what I've done here tonight fixes it.

I've also got to do a lot of work on DMD2 for the Arduino, that's my responsibility and sadly poor health has taken me away from coding until recently, I'm gettting warmed up with some personal projects before I touch a repo that gets referenced against the Arduino IDE.

Thanks, you're a saviour! I've got a bit confused myself in the process but I believe I tried 2.06 first and the system became unstable, going into the kernel panic after every 10 minutes after the reboot or so. After a reinstall I've tried 1.08 and that one worked perfectly. So I guess the option that definitely works are 1.08 versions of CIM and arcconf. Though please leave the other versions up as well, otherwise I believe they're most likely lost media. I think I might go on a web archive scraping spree for whatever I'll manage to find and post all that stuff on the Internet Archive later. Thanks again!

no worries, you're welcome! I'm glad to be of assistance, adaptec cards are cool!