[SOLVED] LSI 9211-8i P20 IT Mode for ZFS FreeNAS unRAID 6Gbps SAS HBA ESXi

[passatiji]

Hello everyone,

I have an HP Z600 that is used as home server with VMware ESXi 8.0 installed. I also have a separate Truenas Mini appliance as a storage and the idea was to virtualize one more Truenas instance.
For this purpose I ordered pre-flashed LSI 9211-8i P20 IT Mode for ZFS FreeNAS unRAID 6Gbps SAS HBA and a couple 2Tb drives to install in the Z600.
When the system is starting, the bios can recognize the LSI 9211 card and drives connected to it but the card and drives are not visible in the VMware so, I can't passthrough the card or even see drives.
Are there any tricks to make it work?
Please advise.

 

[jgreco]

You need to go into the ESXi management portal. I don't have an ESXi 8 host handy but under ESXi 6.7 it is under Host->Manage->Hardware->PCI Devices.

Look for a device with the Description of "LSI Logic / Symbios Logic LSI2008" and then click the "Toggle Passthrough" if it isn't already. Changing the passthrough state of a device will REQUIRE A HYPERVISOR REBOOT, and your HBA will not be available to the VM until you do the hypervisor reboot.

I think the Z600 is likely to be able to do the passthru without trouble. Please be sure you're following the virtualization guide as well
.

Resource - "Absolutely must virtualize TrueNAS!" ... a guide to not completely losing your data.

[---- 2024/01/16: Still relevant. Virtualization really doesn't change much. Updates made as appropriate. ----] [---- 2018/02/27: This is still as relevant as ever. As PCIe-Passthru has matured, fewer problems are reported. I've updated some...

www.truenas.com

 

[Ericloewe]

Wasn't there something about ESXI refusing to configure passthrough for devices not in its HCL? With the SAS2 controllers no longer being supported, that would throw a wrench into this.

 

[jgreco]

Wasn't there something about ESXI refusing to configure passthrough for devices not in its HCL? With the SAS2 controllers no longer being supported, that would throw a wrench into this.

I know that there were "problems" with ESXi 7. It does not make sense to me that it would refuse to configure passthru for arbitrary PCIe devices; ESXi is extremely incompatible with lots of PCIe devices yet you can pass them through. So HCL shouldn't be a consideration. My understanding was that the deprecated LSI SAS devices were being picked up as disk controllers but then something was going awry in a way that would not allow the hypervisor to boot reliably; I believe you had to ... power it down, maybe? Which might still be the case in ESXi 8. In any case, there was some extra VMware Annoyance Factor caused by using the LSI 6Gbps controllers. The problem the poster outlined sounded more like unfamiliarity with the virtualization passthru configuration.

 

[passatiji]

You need to go into the ESXi management portal. I don't have an ESXi 8 host handy but under ESXi 6.7 it is under Host->Manage->Hardware->PCI Devices.

Look for a device with the Description of "LSI Logic / Symbios Logic LSI2008" and then click the "Toggle Passthrough" if it isn't already. Changing the passthrough state of a device will REQUIRE A HYPERVISOR REBOOT, and your HBA will not be available to the VM until you do the hypervisor reboot.

I think the Z600 is likely to be able to do the passthru without trouble. Please be sure you're following the virtualization guide as well
.

Resource - "Absolutely must virtualize TrueNAS!" ... a guide to not completely losing your data.

[---- 2024/01/16: Still relevant. Virtualization really doesn't change much. Updates made as appropriate. ----] [---- 2018/02/27: This is still as relevant as ever. As PCIe-Passthru has matured, fewer problems are reported. I've updated some...

www.truenas.com

This worked!!!
Thank you.

 

[passatiji]

Wasn't there something about ESXI refusing to configure passthrough for devices not in its HCL? With the SAS2 controllers no longer being supported, that would throw a wrench into this.

Yes, you are correct about ESXi ignoring the card and drives connected to it (this is what scared me). But it still allows to passthrough that PCI device and it is visible by the VM.