ESXi 5 VT-D Passthrough

[SilverNZ]

This is driving me up the wall...

I have an i5 -2400 running in an HP 3300 MT. The bios has VT-D turned ON(I'm using this computer as it specifically recognzies VT-D in the bios).

The CPU supports VT-D (I've checked on intel's site).

Yet, I cannot enable passthrough. ESXi says "Host does not support passthrough configuration".

What am I doing wrong? The hardware checks out, and I have a card in the PCI-E 1x slot which can be shared. I've also tried the same CPU in a Gigabyte P67A-UD3R-B3 motherboard.

Must be something simple surely? Any help would be appreciated

Cheers

Chris

[Troy_Clavell]

you'll probably need to add the following line to you ESXi5 Host

vhv.allow = "TRUE"

see more information below

http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2011/07/how-to-enable-support-for-nested-64bit.html

[SilverNZ]

I get the following error:

                                        vhv.allow: not found

[SilverNZ]

Never mind... I used:

echo 'vhv.allow = "TRUE"' >> /etc/vmware/config

From http://www.vcritical.com/2011/07/vmware-vsphere-can-virtualize-itself/

However Passthrough is still disabled :smileycry:

[Troy_Clavell]

Are you running ESXi5 as a VM within VMware Workstation?

copy the below (after the #) line while connected through PuTTY or the DCUI

# echo 'vhv.allow = "TRUE" ' >> /etc/vmware/config

[SilverNZ]

I"m using ESXi5 as you normally would. It is installed onto the physical machine, It is the only OS on the disk

[Troy_Clavell]

sorry, I was a bit confused.  You are trying to enable VMDirect Path? What is it you are trying to passthrough to?

[Troy_Clavell]

please also provide the exact specs on the CPU in question.  not all i5 chips support VT-d

[SilverNZ]

Sorry, I should have been clearer.

An HP 3300MT with VT-D enabled in the bios running a i5 2400 CPU(Supports VT-D as per intel site). This system cannot use passthrough(No idea why). The option is greyed out.
I'd like to passthrough anything I can as a test. The goal is to have ONE VM on an esxi machine which passes through a PCI card to it. But for now, I just want to get this working as a test.

http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/5746/97654009.png

I can't enable passthrough, as above

[Troy_Clavell]

i'm with you now... you should see supported devices to configure passthrough.  I don't have host that supports VT-d, so it may be a bit tough for me to test.

[SilverNZ]

Yea.. it doesn't make much sense.

I have an Intel Gigabit card in a pcie slot which should show up. But the option to enable passthrough isn't even there. ESXi for some reason believes it's not capable...

[SilverNZ]

Hi Guys, I've solved this issue. We changed the hardware completley. It is now running an Intel Q67 motherboard (Intel DQ67SW(B3). It seems that other manufactures turn off the VT-D option. Even though you can enable it, it actually isn't there. Gigabyte sent me a beta bios for their P67A chipset, however I was reluctant to deploy that

Everything is working with the motherboard listed, and an intel i5 2500 (non k) cpu.

Bear in mind, there is performance loss with VT-D enabled.

Cpu list:

http://ark.intel.com/search/advanced?VTD=true

Thanks for your help everyone!