Several weeks back I had shared a solution in which you can install a hardware mock VIB for Nested ESXi when using vSAN Express Storage Architecture (ESA) and VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) to work around the vSAN ESA certified disks pre-check validations.
While the majority of my testing uses Nested ESXi, I have recently been deploying a physical VCF environment and I due to the limited number of NVMe devices, I wanted to use vSAN ESA for the VCF Management Domain but of course I would run into the same vSAN ESA certified disks pre-check validations, which would prevent the installer from proceeding.
I was hoping that I could also use the mocking method to allow my physical deployment but after some trial and error, I ran into inconsistent behaviors and after speaking with Engineering, I came to learn that the existing solution would also apply to a physical ESXi deployment as the physical storage controllers are made hidden by the mocking method and as long as you have vSAN ESA capable NVMe devices, it should allow vSAN ESA HCL pre-check to pass and continue with the installation!
