topic Re: Can't find a particular ESXi BIOS setting "Intel Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O in ESXi Discussions

Can't find a particular ESXi BIOS setting "Intel Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VT-d)"

rswartz — Fri, 20 May 2022 17:59:53 GMT

So I'm trying to connect a PCI HBA card via DirectPath passthrough to one of our VMs. I believe I've found the VMware docs page explaining how to do so: https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/7.0/com.vmware.vsphere.vm_admin.doc/GUID-5B3CAB26-5D06-4A99-92A0-3A04C69CE64B.html , but I've run into an issue when going through the prerequisites listed there.

Basically it says "Intel Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VT-d) or AMD I/O Virtualization Technology (IOMMU) must be enabled in the host BIOS". I'm assuming this means the ESXi host, but when I go into it's BIOS settings neither of these settings are listed. There is a setting called "Virtualization Technology" in the "Processor settings" section which is by default enabled, but I'm not sure this is what it's talking about. I was also directed to the setting "SR-IOV Global Enable" under the "Integrated Devices" tab, the information page for which I'll link just below, but which doesn't seem to imply it is what I'm looking for and doesn't mention DirectPath or Passthrough anywhere.

https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-in/000144029/enabling-sr-iov-technology-on-dell-poweredge-servers

The ESXi host is running on a PowerEdge R640,

ESXi version 7.0.3,

with BIOS version 2.12.2

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To clarify, I haven't tried connecting the HBA via DirectPath yet, but I'm creating documentation on how to set this up so I need to make sure that I know what the correct BIOS setting is.

I'm going to look through the guest OS BIOS settings to make sure they aren't there and update this post if that's the solution.

Re: Can't find a particular ESXi BIOS setting "Intel Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O

mbufkin — Fri, 20 May 2022 20:53:36 GMT

Please check under the settings of the VM you are wanting this for. Edit Settings then look under CPU. Probably will need to shutdown the VM to make the change. I attached a screenshot. Hopefully this helps.

Re: Can't find a particular ESXi BIOS setting "Intel Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O

bluefirestorm — Sat, 21 May 2022 01:37:25 GMT

My understanding is SR-IOV has a dependency on VT-d (i.e. passthrough of a VF of an SR-IOV device would make use VT-d). So presumably enabling SR-IOV would also enable VT-d; even though you may not necessarily want to be using SR-IOV.

Re: Can't find a particular ESXi BIOS setting "Intel Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O

mbufkin — Sat, 21 May 2022 02:08:45 GMT

Please like and mark as answered if this help.