Help with SATA Controller Passthrough (supermicro) from ESXi 7 to Truenas

[phier]

usb zwave and google usb coral accelerator

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Should work if I'm not mistaken. Did you follow this guide? E.g. first create a virtual USB controller for the VM in question?

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1022290

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

how is it possible that kvm can passthrough one port and esxi (which is "better" hypervisor") cant do that ... strange.

KVM can do whatever some enthusiast feels like implementing - with varying results from super stable to more or less flaky.
ESXi can do what VMware product management sees as necessary/desirable for their enterprise customers - for whom rock solid operation of large datacenter infrastructure is the most important feature.

 

[Scharbag]

well ... i thought using external pcie hba it will work fine...

wasnt able to find any "step-by-step" with hw description etc... configuration that works okay... also who "proved" how its working okay...

There are some best practices on how to virtualize TrueNAS. While it is not officially supported, it does work and is very stable if you follow these best practices.

First and foremost is use hardware that is supported by VMware if possible. Secondly, get a TrueNAS supported HBA - such as the LSI 9211-8i.

I followed this guide years ago. It is a bit outdated but it covers the salient points very well.

I have been running TrueNAS (starting with FreeNAS) for a great many years. I want to say 2015 is when I started. I have had a few system issues, but they have mostly been my own fault (trying to install too much RAM, trying to give TrueNAS too much RAM). Only once in all of these years has my system crashed - and that was due to an HBA failure (ESXi did not crash, only TrueNAS but I have a bit of inception going on...).

Happy virtualizing!!

 

[homer27081990]

I TLDR;-red the convo, so I might be a little off, but keep in mind: ESXi is notoriously enterprise-centered. Simple, taken-for-granted controllers that could be jurry-rigged anywhere else are simply looked down upon by most Type I Hypervisors, more so than most ESXi. I would try to KVM it, if possible.

 

[homer27081990]

I TLDR;-red the convo, so I might be a little off, but keep in mind: ESXi is notoriously enterprise-centered. Simple, taken-for-granted controllers that could be jurry-rigged anywhere else are simply looked down upon by most Type I Hypervisors, more so than most ESXi. I would try to KVM it, if possible.

Big mistake of noob, did not see the other 2 pages of comments :S... Apologies...

 

[diogen]

...ESXi is notoriously enterprise-centered. Simple, taken-for-granted controllers that could be jurry-rigged anywhere else are simply looked down upon by most Type I Hypervisors, more so than most ESXi.

If you are OK with ESXi 6.0/6.5 (or your CPU is to old to go higher), sideloading drivers (e.g. Realtek) is very doable.
Unless you are after vSAN, NSX, clusters and some of the other 99+ VMware apps, ESXi 6.0 is just as good as ESXi 7.0.

 

[phier]

ESXi 6.0 is just as good as ESXi 7.0.

is there point to use 6.0 as 7.0 is there?

it does work and is very stable if you follow these best

thanks,
at the moment i just passthrough mb sata controller to Truenas and it seems working okay. But yes the plan is to buy HBA as soon as possible.

thanks!

 

[diogen]

is there point to use 6.0 as 7.0 is there?

It depends...

The 7U3 is the latest and supporting the most recent CPUs.
Hence, if your hardware is not more than 1-2 years old it would make sense.
Also, if you want to run clusters, then definitely use 7.0...

But feature-wise I don't know about any significant improvements made to the hypervisor itself.
Considering the recommended (and reasonably priced) hardware for TrueNAS is 5+ years old, ESXi 6.x will do just fine.
And, as icing on the cake, if you stick with 6.0 you can use the old C# client (not web client) that is quite a bit more responsive...

And you can run 6.0 on a 1GB USB whereas 7.0 requires high-endurance storage like SSD...

 

[neofusion]

is there point to use 6.0 as 7.0 is there?


thanks,
at the moment i just passthrough mb sata controller to Truenas and it seems working okay. But yes the plan is to buy HBA as soon as possible.

thanks!

Hardware support is a moving target.
As mentioned, the newer versions support newer CPUs but drops support for other things, like LSI 92XX HBAs for example, that is one reason those can be bought fairly cheap used.

 

[diogen]

...drops support for other things, like LSI 92XX HBAs...

Good point!
It also dropped support for SolarFlare 10G NICs.

Some of the dropped PCIe devices can still be passthrough to VMs but that's a tad too much for comfort.

If you have to use 7.0 and want cheap 10G, the Broadcom 57810s SFP+ card still works and is reasonably priced on eBay...

 

[nabsltd]

And, as icing on the cake, if you stick with 6.0 you can use the old C# client (not web client) that is quite a bit more responsive...

6.5 uses HTML5 to generate the web pages, and is much more responsive. The only thing I feel is bad is the overall layout of the UI could use an overhaul, because it looks like they tried to duplicate layout of the Flash-based version, and then added more stuff and moved things around a bit. This means that some things are not in the same place as in either of the 2 previous UI incarnations, so it's a pain to find them.

 

[phier]

And you can run 6.0 on a 1GB USB whereas 7.0 requires high-endurance storage like SSD...

thanks, well i am running 7.0 on ssd thats correct. wasnt aware that 6 is good to go ;/

 

[Scharbag]

Good point!
It also dropped support for SolarFlare 10G NICs.

Some of the dropped PCIe devices can still be passthrough to VMs but that's a tad too much for comfort.

If you have to use 7.0 and want cheap 10G, the Broadcom 57810s SFP+ card still works and is reasonably priced on eBay...

I run 2 LSI SAS 2008 chipset card (8e and 8i) on the latest 7.0.3 no problem. When you use pass through, ESXI does not even see the card.

We run 7 at work so for consistency, I run 7 at home. 6.5 and 6.7 are both totally fine too. 6.0 is a little clunky but it worked for me for years. So did 6.5. Never ran 6.7 at home - cpu was not supported. So I updated my host and jumped to 7.

Anyway, any of the versions will work fine for home use. I picked up an X9 super micro server cheap. CPUs will likely be dropped on next release but such is life. I have DDR3 ram spilling off my desk, so I will make due with 7.0 until we start replacing servers with DDR4 in them :)