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Faize
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Has anybody gotten Intel onboard SATA passthrough working in ESXi 5.5?

The last time I tried (with 5.5U1) it worked if the VM was installed and booted via UEFI rather than BIOS, but unfortunately that led to a whole host of other issues and I ended up having to downgrade back to 5.1.

Has a workaround been discovered in the months since? Or better yet, can anybody confirm if VMware has fixed this in 5.5U2?

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Faize
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In case anyone else has this issue, I'm happy to report that Update 2 has fixed all passthrough issues for X58/ICH10. I didn't have to do anything special - or more specifically, anything different from 5.1. I just clean installed 5.5U2 from the ISO (with all SATA cables physically disconnected, of course...), (re)configured DirectPath I/O and datastores, fired up the VM, and everything worked as expected - for a change.

Let's just hope future releases (5.5U3? 6.0?) don't break everything again...

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Faize
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Thanks for the link - I have X58/ICH10 rather than Lynx Point, so I missed that discussion but any clue is welcome Smiley Happy

As I don't have a spare 5.5 box to test with, would you mind confirming if the problem (prior to modifying the /etc/vmware/passthru.map file) is that the Lynx Point SATA controller doesn't show up in vSphere Client as a device that can be passed through, or that the Lynx Point SATA controller can be selected, but the guest can't see it?

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muellererwin
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It's the first issue: The controller doesn't show up to be passed through.

For your controller: use lspci -v to find out the parameters to change in /etc/vmware/passthru.map.

See: Re: DirectPath I/O support for Haswell Lynx Point SATA AHCI controller

Good luck

Faize
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In case anyone else has this issue, I'm happy to report that Update 2 has fixed all passthrough issues for X58/ICH10. I didn't have to do anything special - or more specifically, anything different from 5.1. I just clean installed 5.5U2 from the ISO (with all SATA cables physically disconnected, of course...), (re)configured DirectPath I/O and datastores, fired up the VM, and everything worked as expected - for a change.

Let's just hope future releases (5.5U3? 6.0?) don't break everything again...

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