We have a problem with AOC-USAS-L4iR SAS HBA on Vmware ESX 4.0
ESX not see any external storage on this card, and also not see HBA on boot -
Here string from lspci output :
03:00.0 SCSI storage controller: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic Unknown device 0059 (rev 08)
But in your HCL this HBA marked as ESX-compatibility
Since VMware support for IT mode, just mark sure flash firmware to IT mode already.
You can download the VMware driver for AOC-USAS-L4iR name is mptsas version 4.21.00.01.1-5vmw.