ATTO ExpressSAS H644 PassThrough Crashing Server with Purple Screen of Death (PSOD)

[Markus99]

Hello,

i have freshly installed a ESXi 6.7 (Build 16075168) on a HPE Proliant DL380Gen9 with SPP 2020.03.0, vib-bundle mar2020 and a ATTO ExpressSAS H644 installed.

Connected to the Atto is a Tape Library (one Tapedrive with a robotic-unit) to do additional Backups. The ESXi Server is installed on a 128GB SD-Card.

The Proliant has 2 900GB HDs installed in Raid 10 for VMFS-Storage and there is a VM installed (Win2016 all Patches). So far so good. I have to bring now the ATTO-Card in PassThrough Mode. Thats also working. But when i connect the SAS-Card to the VM (RAM-Reservation is done) and switch on the VM, the VM starts up till 42% and then i have a Purple Screen of Death on the Hypervisor-Server.

I checked the ATTO-Driver on the ESXi, there was no driver. I installed the driver-vib (esas2hba 1.70 SAS Driver for ATTO). But there is still the same Problem with PSOD.

PSOD: LINTI/MMI (motherboard nonmaskable interrupt), undiagnosed.

Someone has a solution?

Thanks

Markus

[mcgmantx]

I have the exact same issue on a Dell Poweredge R540.

1.  Install the controller

2.  Login to VMware and enable pass-through

3.  Reboot the server in maintenance mode

4.  Add the controller to the virtual server which requires the memory reservation to be set

5.  Start the virtual machine, then, the dreaded purple screen of death

Did you figure it out on your server?

Any ideas VMware?

[Markus99]

I have not found a solution for the ATTO. I changed the SAS HBA to a HPE Smart HBA H241. With this HBA its working.

Steps to set for Passthrough:

- In Server Bios (RBSU) set the Virtualisation SR-IOV to Enable

- In HP Smart Storage Administrator set the HBA to HBA-Mode

- Update to the newest Firmware (at this time 7.0)

- install the newest vib-driver in the ESXi

- in the UI set the HBA to Passthrough (reboot the ESXi)

- Reserve the RAM for the VM

- Set the VM-BIOS to BIOS NOT to EFI.

Markus

[mcgmantx · Accepted solution]

I contacted ATTO Support and they confirmed that this is an issue with the 6 GB version; however, they are not issuing a fix for it and suggested getting the 12 GB version of the controller.

Here was the response...

I'm Mike, Sr. Tech Specialist at ATTO. Bringing you bad news today, unfortunately.

The H6XX series of SAS HBAs has an outstanding issue with direct passthrough in ESXi. It's not likely that the bug will be fixed, since our newer 12Gb HBA product line does not experience the issue.

There's no real workaround other than using our 12Gb model, or by avoiding passthrough altogether.

[daphnissov]

Although you're probably aware, I'll just state for the record in this thread that passing through tape devices (robots or libraries) to ESXi is not officially supported. From my experience in the field, I've also seen this result in some instabilities as well.