Recently I got a few questions about the VMware HCL and how to verify I/O devices without knowing all the key details of the device. Let’s start of by looking at the VMware HCL, note that there are additional fields on which a search can be done for I/O Devices.
The Device Identifiers are separated into the following items:
| VID | Vendor ID |
| DID | Device ID |
| SVID | Subsystem Vendor ID |
| SSID | Subsystem ID |
Getting the Device Identifiers on your ESX(i) Host is done by taking a look at the current running PCI config by issuing the following command:
For an ESX Host: cat /proc/vmware/pci
For an ESXi Host: lspci –p
The output will display all the Device Identifiers needed to verify the I/O device against the VMware HCL. (in this example the details of a HBA).
More information on Device Identifiers in combination with PowerShell can be found in this excellent article of Luc Dekens.
