Recently I installed VMware ESXi on a HP DL160 Gen9 server and couldn’t boot afterwards. After a short investigation I found out that the default configuration of the controller prevents booting. The controller should be configured and enabled to support SATA AHCI mode. Actually it is necessary to configure it for all servers carrying HP Smart Array B110i, B120i, B140i and B320i RAID controllers.
To do that:
1) In BIOS/UEFI, go into “System Options”
2) Go to SATA Controller Options -> Embedded SATA Configuration
3) Select “Enable SATA AHCI Support”
For a similar case in RedHat: http://access.redhat.com/articles/118133