BUILD Passing through onboard SATA from the X10SDV-TLN4F-O? Bad idea?

[jdong]

I'm currently doing a build using the SuperMicro X10SDV-TLN4F (the Xeon-D 1541 board), as an ESXi consolidated VM + storage solution. I've already planned ahead and am going to use an IBM ServerRAID M1015 as the HBA in VT-d pass through for FreeNAS, which I understand to be one of the recommended configurations.

However, I'm staring at the 6 onboard SATA ports and can't help but wonder if they could be useful, either as extra ports for replacing offline drives or for L2ARC/SLOG drives.

Is it a bad idea to attempt to pass through the onboard SATA controller too? I've read that it may or may not work depending on the chipset.

 

[Ericloewe]

Is it a bad idea to attempt to pass through the onboard SATA controller too

I'd call it something like "not quite a fool's errand". Experiences are decidedly mixed with other Intel chipsets.

 

[CookiesLikeWhoa]

We've passed the SATA controller through on our ESXI host and it seems to work well, it's an X8 system. No missing smart info, no weirdness at all really. It must be said though that this has only been done for 6 months, this is not nearly enough time to say for certain if this is stable or not. Also this is more of a scratch FreeNAS than anything.

 

[wenlez]

We've passed the SATA controller through on our ESXI host and it seems to work well, it's an X8 system. No missing smart info, no weirdness at all really. It must be said though that this has only been done for 6 months, this is not nearly enough time to say for certain if this is stable or not. Also this is more of a scratch FreeNAS than anything.

May I ask How you can get the onboard SATA controller passthrough to ESXi? I have a similar board ( Supermicro x10sdv-4c-tln2f), and I do not see an option under ESXi to passthrough. I am using ESXi 6.5 .

 

[Ericloewe]

May I ask How you can get the onboard SATA controller passthrough to ESXi? I have a similar board ( Supermicro x10sdv-4c-tln2f), and I do not see an option under ESXi to passthrough. I am using ESXi 6.5 .

It's far from guaranteed it will work. Don't expect it to work.

 

[Stux]

May I ask How you can get the onboard SATA controller passthrough to ESXi? I have a similar board ( Supermicro x10sdv-4c-tln2f), and I do not see an option under ESXi to passthrough. I am using ESXi 6.5 .

You can find the details on the controller using lspci, but luckily, afaik, all SuperMicro XeonD board are the same, and thus, for an X10sdv the below will work.

First, verify you have VT-d enabled in the BIOS.

You need to add :

Code:

# INTEL Lynx Point AHCI
8086 8c02 d3d0 false

to /etc/vmware/passthru.map

you do this using vi in the shell. After saving your change you need to reboot. Then you can add the PCI Device for the AHCI controller to your FreeNAS VM.

And then FreeNAS will have exclusive/full access to all 6 SATA ports.

It seems to work quite well.

 

[Ericloewe]

you do this using vi in the shell.

ee is a much saner, simpler experience that is unequivocally superior for 1-2 line jobs.

 

[Stux]

ee is a much saner, simpler experience that is unequivocally superior for 1-2 line jobs.

agreed, but neither ee, nano or pico are built into vSphere 6.5 (afaik)

 

[Ericloewe]

agreed, but neither ee, nano or pico are built into vSphere 6.5 (afaik)

They only include vi? Bunch of sadists.

 

[Spearfoot]

I'm currently doing a build using the SuperMicro X10SDV-TLN4F (the Xeon-D 1541 board), as an ESXi consolidated VM + storage solution. I've already planned ahead and am going to use an IBM ServerRAID M1015 as the HBA in VT-d pass through for FreeNAS, which I understand to be one of the recommended configurations.

However, I'm staring at the 6 onboard SATA ports and can't help but wonder if they could be useful, either as extra ports for replacing offline drives or for L2ARC/SLOG drives.

Is it a bad idea to attempt to pass through the onboard SATA controller too? I've read that it may or may not work depending on the chipset.

I configured SATA controller pass-through on my Supermicro X10SL7-F system, details here: "Configure ESXi to pass-through the X10SL7-F motherboard SATA controller".

It worked fine for the short time that I used it, but I re-configured the system and removed the pass-through setup.

As others on this thread have warned, doing this is a hit-or-miss proposition. I wouldn't recommend using it on a production server without several months of testing.

 

[joeschmuck]

The problem I faced when using my onboard SATA controller being put into pass-thru was I wanted to still use a SSD as my boot device and datastore for ESXi. I couldn't do both with my motherboard so I resorted to a few add-on SATA cards and put those into pass-thru instead and the onboard SATA ports are just for ESXi use. Not what I really wanted but it's stable which is more important to me.

 

[Stux]

I used m2 PCIe.

Only six ports on the x10sdv and six HDs.

One day I may expand to 8 HDs, and I shall plunk in an LSI HBA then.

Or perhaps some more m2 cards in the remaining pci slot (up to 4 are supported!)