VMware Cloud Community
monte1299
Contributor
Contributor

Cannot passthrough Intel Corporation Wellsburg AHCI Controller

Hello!

I am trying to pass through my AHCI controller to a virtual machine, but when I look at the PCI devices under my Host, it shows that Passthrough is Not Capable.  Several of my other PCI devices (network card, different SATA controller, USB Host Controllers, etc.) are listed and capable of passthrough, so I don't think it is a vt-d issue. 

I added the following lines to my /etc/vmware/passthru.map:

# Intel Corporation Wellsburg AHCI Controller [vmhba0]

8086  8d62  d3d0     false

# Intel Corporation Wellsburg AHCI Controller [vmhba1]

8086  8d02  d3d0     false

After reboot, I can see device under PCI Devices, but it is grayed out.  Is there a specific log that would show me the issue that ESXi is having when trying to pass through this device?  Any help would be greatly appreciated!

--monte1299

Reply
0 Kudos
5 Replies
monte1299
Contributor
Contributor

Here's a little more information.  My motherboard is a Supermicro X10srm-f.  In ESXi, I am seeing all of the drives connected to my onboard SATA controller, but no matter what I try, I cannot get the pass through to work.  I've tried changing the reset and shareable parameters, but still no luck.

I originally built this system to be an all-in-one system with FreeNAS and ESXi.  I originally put FreeNAS on the bare metal and configured the zpools how I wanted.  I have 8x8TB spinning drives for storage and 2x1TB of SSD storage for VM's.  I also have an ASMedia PCI SATA controller in a PCI slot with a single 120GB SSD for my boot drive.  Everything works great in FreeNAS.  I backed up that configuration and then put ESXi on the bare metal.  Now I want to create a VM in ESXi for FreeNAS and pass through my onboard SATA controller to the VM.  I can pass the entire controller because aside from my PCI SATA controller for the boot drive, all of the storage should be under control of FreeNAS.  However, as you'll see in the screenshots, the onboard SATA controllers are showing up as "Not Capable" of pass through.  Funny enough, my cheap little PCI SATA Controller that I use for the boot drive IS available for pass through (see screenshot). 

The only other thing I can mention is that on this mother board, there are 6 SATA ports directly on the mobo, and then another 4 ports are made available through an SFF-8087 connector.  That is how I was able to get 10 disks connected.  This is also why there are two Intel Wellsburg AHCI controllers in the list of PCI devices.  I want to pass through both controllers to the FreeNAS VM eventually.

I'm really stuck on this one - any ideas?

Reply
0 Kudos
jUDASmILExAlmig
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I don't have server with supermicro motherboard in hand, I can try to find out if there's any server with wellsburg ahci controller that can be used for this scenario.

BTW: I found a KB maybe helpful for you about supportability of pci passthrough:

VMware Knowledge Base

And, which version of ESXi you are using? Thanks.

Reply
0 Kudos
monte1299
Contributor
Contributor

Hello!  Thank you for your help.  I had found that Knowledge Base article as well, but I didn't find anything in there that I could use to debpug this.  I've decided to keep the existing server as my primary FreeNAS machine and I'll build a new one for ESXi.  I'm sure both sets of software will be happier and more stable running on their own hardware.  Thanks again for your help!

--

Reply
0 Kudos
jUDASmILExAlmig
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

You are welcome and feel free to raise questions/requests in the community. We are happy to assist you to get the problem resolved.

Reply
0 Kudos
kiwifruktish
Contributor
Contributor

monte1299

Did you find any fix? i have the same board.

Reply
0 Kudos