I'm in the process of reinstalling my VMs and while I'm at it, I naturally want to get the best possible performance out of the VMs. This starts with the choice of SCSI controller for the VMs. By default, VMware vSphere offers the LSI Logic SAS Controller for Windows Server 2012 R2. The controller is also recognized by Windows, but the VMware Paravirtual SCSI Controller (PVSCSI) is better suited for IO-intensive applications:
According to VMware, the Paravirtual SCSI Controller is supported with Windows Server 2012 R2:
However, Server 2012 R2 can only be installed once the driver has been loaded from VMware Tools. Otherwise, no controller and therefore no hard disk will be found:
To load the driver, simply load the VMware Tools image during the installation:
VM -> Guest -> Install/update Vmware Tools
As soon as the Vmware Tools image has been loaded, the driver can be loaded using "Add driver":
The PVSCSI driver is located in the following folder on the VMware Tools CD:
\Program Files\Vmware\Vmware Tools\Drivers\pvscsi\amd64
The driver is displayed and can be loaded
After the PVSCSI driver has been loaded, the VMware Tools image must be unmounted:
VM -> Guest -> Stop installation of VMware Tools
Finally, click once on the "Update" button. The installation can now begin.
