Hello,

We are attempting to upgrade a few of our Mac Pro 2012 servers with newer hardware.

Currently our Mac Pro 2012 servers run ESXi 5.5 and we were interested in knowing if we could add a PCI express card that would support one or two SSDs in the Mac Pro and vmWare would recognize and be able to boot from the PCIe card SSD drive(s).  I have looked all over the web for an answer to this, but have not turned up any solid information that this would work.

We are specifically looking at these three cards:

Sonnet Technologies Tempo

https://www.amazon.com/Sonnet-Technologies-Tempo-Drives-TSATA6-SSD-E2/dp/B0096P62G6

Apricorn Velocity Duo

Amazon.com: Apricorn Velocity Duo SSD Upgrade Kit and Disc Array for PC and Mac (VEL-DUO): Computers & Accessories

OWC Accelsior S

Amazon.com: OWC Accelsior S: PCIe to 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD Host Adapter: Computers & Accessories

All three are apparently recognized by the Mac Pro hardware out of the box, but what I cannot determine is if they would be recognizable by vmWare and bootable as well.

Additionally, if any of these cards can be used, would there be a huge performance drop if the ESXi OS was installed on an SSD connected to the motherboard SATA on Mac Pro and data (vmdks) were stored on the PCIe SSDs? Would the VMDKs perform better or worse if the boot drive was attached to the SATA II in the Mac Pro?

Thanks,