Flashing IBM M1115 (SAS 9223) with LSI SAS 9211-8i firmware to use with ESXi 5 (FreeNAS guest w/RDM)

I bought an IBM M1115 6 Gbps SAS controller card from ebay and cross flashed it with the LSI 9211-8i firmware to use with VMware ESXi 5.

The cross flashing tutorial:

IBM ServeRAID M1015 Part 4: Cross flashing to a LSI9211-8i in IT or IR mode

Everything works fine in ESXi and I have a FreeNAS 9 guest directly using my HDD through Raw Device Mapping (RDM).

There are two ESXi configuration changes needed for the FreeNAS guest to work properly:

  1.  Raw Device Mapping option is grayed out (1017704)
  2.  Configuring promiscuous mode on a virtual switch or portgroup (1004099)

The first change allows selecting local drives via RDM and the latter is to access the plugin jail ip address (e.g. Tranmission).

2 Replies to “Flashing IBM M1115 (SAS 9223) with LSI SAS 9211-8i firmware to use with ESXi 5 (FreeNAS guest w/RDM)”

  1. I have tried to flash my card on like 6 different computers but none recognize it, if I were to send it to you and paid you could you flash mine?

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