ESXI 6.0 with a MNPA19-XTR installed in passthrough. I can see it in a windows VM, but not in a FreeNAS vm Why not?

[Roveer]

I've been experimenting with FreeNAS and installed it in a VM along with a HBA and a Mellanox MNPA19-XTR (Connectex-2) 10 GB card both in passthrough mode.

I can see the HBA, but not the Mellanox card.  If I don't passthrough I can configure the NIC as a VM device, but I'm not getting good throughput so I want to passthrough.

Also, if I have it in passthrough I can see and use it in a Win 10 VM just fine.

Is there something special about FreeNAS for FreeBSD on which it is built?

Thanks.

Roveer

[Roveer]

Update.

I did a little more testing by running up a FreeBSD VM (which is the OS FreeNAS is based on, still could not see the adapter in pass through.  I know from installing on stand-alone hardware that it will see it and use it automatically when on a dedicated hardware.

I also ran up my Ubuntu desktop VM and it could see and use it in pass through just fine.

Finally, after looking around I found some posts about having to compile drivers for it (not necessary when installed on stand-alone hardware), I tried and it failed saying something about "no free irq's".  Couldn't find much more information on that problem. 

I switched it back to a VM provided device and did some testing and found I was getting iperf speeds of 9+Gb/s so I went forward with it like that which is fine.

Still interested in understanding why it wouldn't work on FreeBSD but did on Windows & Ubuntu.

Roveer