Adding SLOG: FreeNAS will not boot with m.2 Optane 800p passthrough in ESXi 6.7 VM

[JJT211]

As the title suggests, im trying to add a SLOG to my FreeNAS pool to improve NFS.

I am able to passthrough the m.2 in ESXi but once I attach it to FreeNAS, it just stalls during boot with a "nvme0: missing interrrupt" message. It just repeats and repeats and never boots. See attached

In BIOS I have the following PCIe settings:
M.2 PCI-E 3.0 X4 OPROM =EFI
SLOT7 PCI-E 3.0 X16 Bifurcation = 8x8x
SLOT7 PCI-E 3.0 X16 OPROM = EFI

See signature for hardware info but for the mobile users, im running a Supermicro AMD EPYC 3251 w/ 64GB RAM and an LSI 2308 HBA running ESXi 6.7u3 In case anyone questions the AMD board, I tried installing on my Work NAS which is a Supermicro Xeon-D 1521 w/ same RAM, LSI controller and running on ESXi 6.7u2. I also tried the Intel Optane 16GB m.2 at work with similar results.

Any ideas??

 

[JJT211]

Looks like I found the solution

https://www.ixsystems.com/community...g-interrupt-after-esxi-and-bios-update.78745/

 

[averyfreeman]

PSA: I was having this exact same issue, just want to mention a couple things that might help other people trying to pass through Intel x00P-line NVMe to FreeBSD-based VM hosted on ESXi.

Other posts have mentioned adding pciPassthru.msiEnabled = "FALSE" flag to your .vmx file. This is under:

Code:

VM --> Edit (or Settings in VCSA) --> VM Options (tab) --> Advanced Configuration (expand) --> Edit configuration (menu) 

Click Add Parameter and add pciPassthruX.msiEnabled in the left field, and FALSE in the right. Then hit OK and try your VM again, and see if the dreaded nvme0: missing interrrupt message still prevents boot. Note: X should be the order of PCI device you have passed through to the VM (see below) - typically 0 or 1.

1. If you already have an HBA passed through to your TrueNAS VM (as recommended), it's likely your .vmx flag will be pciPassthru1.msiEnabled = "FALSE", as this is based on the order of device(s) you have passed through. I included a screenshot.​
2. If this is still an issue, you may want to adjust your resetMethod or fptShareable params in /etc/vmware/passthru.map of your ESXi host. I did not have this issue, so I can't speak to it further, but my past experience suggests to me that you'd want to make the PCIe device as non-shareable and non-resettable as possible. There's instructions inside the file. ESXi runs in memory, so changes made to the file (or most the hypervisor's core features, generally speaking) are usually only available through reboot.​
3. Apparently this is not an issue in FreeBSD 13, so once TrueNAS catches up, we should all be able to remove the pciPassthruX.msiEnabled flag: https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=247944​