It’s a little above my head… but… if you are running eSXi and want to save money… it is supposed to support PCI passthrough to the VM. If it actually worked with the PCI cards you need… you could theoretically have a VM with PCI access. My guess is that this is probably not recommend though in the Asterisk/FreePBX Community.
This guy said he got it working:
https://community.freepbx.org/t/sangoma-a102de-in-a-esxi-server/20628/13
Configuring passthrough devices
Before configuring a device for PCI Passthrough, ensure that platform and device meets the PCI Passthrough requirements, see VMware vSphere VMDirectPath I/O: Requirements for Platforms and Devices (2142307).
To configure passthrough devices on an ESX/ESXi host:
Select an ESX\ESXi host from the Inventory of VMware vSphere Client.
In the Configuration tab, click Hardware Advanced Settings. The passthrough Configuration page lists all available pass-through devices.
Note: A green icon indicates that a device is enabled and active. An orange icon indicates that the state of the device has changed and the host must be rebooted before the device can be used.
Click Edit.
Select the devices and click OK.
When the devices are selected, they are marked with an orange icon. Reboot for the change to take effect. After rebooting, the devices are marked with a green icon and are enabled.
Note: The configuration changes are saved in the /etc/vmware/esx.conf file.
The PCI slot number where the device was connected is 00:0b:0. It is recorded as:
/device/000:11.0/owner = "passthru"
Note: 11 is the decimal equivalent of the hexadecimal 0b.
To configure a PCI device on a virtual machine:
From the Inventory in vSphere Client, right-click the virtual machine and click Edit Settings.
Click the Hardware tab.
Click Add.
Choose the PCI Device.
Click Next.