I've read through a lot of the whitebox postings and some of the linked documents (especially the vmhelp one -- http://tinyurl.com/28qdfr) and I'm not getting a super clear idea as to whether direct-attached SATA disks are supported at all.
Could someone with a crystal-clear idea clarify SATA disk support? I'm inferring that its not officially supported, but seems to work with some SATA controllers/chipsets but to what extent is totally unclear -- SATA single disk mode? ICHR9 RAID modes (for ICHR9 chipsets, obviously)?
Like everyone else, I'm also interested in a whitebox ESX machine but would like to avoid building an OpenFiler box if I can help it and if possible even avoid spending the $275 on a SATA/SAS combo controller, although it does seem like it "solves" some of the SATA problems by providing a SAS interface to SATA drives, at least at the host level.