I'm coming back to vmWare ESXi after some time away on Citrix XenServer. The reason I'm coming back is because XenServer has poor PCI passthrough support. I want to passthrough two Conexant DVB-T cards to a VM running on ESXi. So I've installed ESXi vsn 5.1, but when I try to mark the DVB-T cards for PCI passthrough in vSphere Client, it forces me to tick ALL the PCI devices, which includes a dual-NIC PCI card. That results in those NICs being unavailable for VMs which is a showstopper for me.
- Why does it force me to select all or none of the PCI devices?
- Is there a way I can only mark the DVB-T cards for PCI passthough and therefore leave the PCI NICs available for the host?
My host is an HP HP Compaq 8200 Elite.