VT-D / PCI Passthrough with ESXi 5.5 and LSI 9240 in IT mode?

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Barry

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Hi,

Has anyone tried VT-D / PCI Passthrough with VMWare ESXi 5.5 (free version, no VCenter) and LSI 9240 in IT mode?

Server is an HP MicroServer Gen8 with a Xeon E3-1265L V2 CPU installed, and I've flashed the 9240 into LSI 9211 IT mode.

ESXi lets me setup PCI Passthrough (aka VMDirectPath) for the LSI, and assign it to the FreeNAS VM, but when I try to power-on the VM, ESXi throws an error (before FreeNAS starts trying to boot):
"Failed to register the device pciPassthru0"

I've also tried with a new VM configured for FreeBSD 32-bit, before installing FreeNAS to the VM.

I realize this is an ESXi problem, but I haven't found anything online.

Many other HP Microserver users report that the 9211 and IBM m1015 both work fine in IT mode, and supposedly the 9240 in IT mode should work as well.

EDIT: This is resolved in ESXi 5.5 Patch 4


Thanks,
Barry
 
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jgreco

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We're running vSphere and 5.5 (not free) with an M1015 on an E5 platform without issue.

You can acquire a vSphere trial license and try the full product if you think that's the trouble, but first be sure the HP's BIOS has been set to enable VT-d and nothing else is wrong in the BIOS. I am pretty sure people are using 5.5 free without issue.
 

jgreco

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Oh, also, ESXi MUST be restarted after you make a device available for passthru.
 

Barry

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Hi,

Yes, I did restart ESXi.

VT-D is enabled in the BIOS (and ESXi is allowing passthrough config with the Xeon, whereas with the Celeron, it wouldn't allow the settings).

I'll look at the BIOS settings again, but I don't think I changed anything other than the power profile and onboard SATA config.

Thank you & Merry Grinchmas!

Barry
 

jgreco

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Well aside from the trial license I'm out of easy ideas. I'd have expected it to work... but I don't have one of those new G8's to play with.
 

Sir.Robin

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I'm using the Onboard LSI 2308 on my X10SL7 with passthrough for FreeNAS on ESXi 5.5 free edt.
No issues here.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

jgreco

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Thanks for the confirmation that free should work!
 
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Hi all, I know this is a slightly old thread, but I'm actually having a similar problem. Using ESXi 5.5 (non-free actually) with IBM M1115 in PCI passthough, but I get the following:

...
mfi0: 1448 )446231862s/0x0020/info) - shutdown command received from host
fdc0: ready for output in input
(repeat)
...
cd0 at ata1 bus 0 scbus1 target 0 lun 0
...
cd0: attempt to query device size failed: NOT READY, Medium not present
...
mfi0: COMMAND 0xffffff8001a453b8 TIMEOUT AFTER 59 SECONDS
(repeat indefinitely, incrementing time)

and the system will not boot :(


Note: I also tried using PCI passthrough on a Debian 7.3 VM and was successful (able to create zpools and ZFS as well).
 

jgreco

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Riiight, I don't think MFI works well with passthrough. Suggest following the instructions to flash it to IT mode.

The recipe I give on virtualizing FreeNAS is meant to be taken in whole, not just grabbing whichever bits you happen to find convenient.
 
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Thanks for the reply! I didn't actually know you had a guide for virtualizing freenas. I'll have a look for that, and follow it over the weekend. Will report back with the results.

Thanks again!

Sent from my C6916 using Tapatalk
 

ser_rhaegar

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To the OP: HP blocks pass through on 5.5. I think 5.1U1 was the last version they supported it on. Can't find the HP kb off hand but it's out there if you google it.

This is due to ESXi sharing RAM for the VM with the device being passed through. Can cause data loss. KB will explain the details, I'll see if I can find it tomorrow.
 

erouan

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I have the same issue with Esxi 5.5 installed on HP ProLiant DL 160 Gen8. I attached a NIC with pass through mode and when I start the VM I have this error :

Failed to start the virtual machine.
Failed to register the device pciPassthru0 for 2:0.1 due to unavailable hardware or software support
 
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Oh that is ****ing pathetic.

That's productive.

I have the same issue with Esxi 5.5 installed on HP ProLiant DL 160 Gen8. I attached a NIC with pass through mode and when I start the VM I have this error :

Failed to start the virtual machine.
Failed to register the device pciPassthru0 for 2:0.1 due to unavailable hardware or software support

Does your CPU support VT-D? Did you reboot the physical server after setting passthrough? Please start a new thread since the topic of this one was Raid card passthrough, not VT-D in general.
 

jgreco

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I'm at a loss as to what would be a productive response.

Maybe "ditch that HP shit, did you hear about their new firmware policy"?

I don't think that's too productive but it is what I have to say.
 
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I'm at a loss as to what would be a productive response.

Maybe "ditch that HP shit, did you hear about their new firmware policy"?

I don't think that's too productive but it is what I have to say.

I'm with you, I hate HP. We almost always go with Dell (because their support will just RMA anything for you, and the R servers are sex in an aluminum case) or IBM. Either way, I'm sure there is a way to make it work on the system assuming that it has VT-D support.

All I'm saying is "HP sucks" doesn't solve the problem ;)
 

jgreco

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Actually I hated Dell after a screwjob about 14 years ago, where a RAID controller just didn't meet the requirements, and they went "return it," then promptly refused to identify where to return it to until the return window had expired.

As someone who's bought new HP servers in the past, I am rather offended by the way the current thing went down.

Sigh.
 

cyberjock

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All I'm saying is "HP sucks" doesn't solve the problem ;)

All I'm saying is this thread should be locked since we don't support ESXi on this forum. This is the FreeNAS forums, not VMWare forums.

I can bet you that you wouldn't be having PCI passthrough problems if you were on bare metal!

ZING!

We literally hijacked this thread from December, for reasons I don't understand, and we're discussing PCI passthrough problems that aren't to blame on FreeNAS. :P
 
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Actually I hated Dell after a screwjob about 14 years ago, where a RAID controller just didn't meet the requirements, and they went "return it," then promptly refused to identify where to return it to until the return window had expired.

As someone who's bought new HP servers in the past, I am rather offended by the way the current thing went down.

Sigh.

I can't vouch for how dell was that long ago, since we only switched in the last 5 or so years (before that we were HP), but everything has been great so far. Even with the cheapest SLA they still bring out replacement parts for us next or 2 day service with a tech to replace the disk and rebuild the arrays for us (in the case of failed HDDs).

I haven't used HP for about a year so I don't know the issue you're talking about, but my biggest issue with them is that every time they send us a server we have to basically assemble the thing ourselves from raid cards to memory etc etc. Also, their SL series servers are TRASH I can't tell you how many times we've called support for those things.
 

gpsguy

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HP's new policy on firmware sux!


Sent from my phone
 
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