PCI Passthrough!!!!
I wanted to set up a FreeNAS server in a VM for home use and wanted to use commodity hardware and found that it is strongly recommended not to do it using virtualised storage (RDM's, VMDK's etc), it needs bare metal access to the storage. So now your options are limited because as far as I know all the hypervisors virtualise storage....
After some research I found that later versions of ESXi support PCI passthrough (also called IOMMU and VT=d) with the right CPU/Motherboard combo (partial list = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IOMMU-supporting_hardware). Some checking on d'internet shows AMD A10 procs and some compatible mobos do this. £150 should get you both....
Biting the hand that feeds IT
