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Malketh
Contributor
Contributor
‎04-27-2011 04:50 PM

PCI Passthrough Problem

I've got an Intel Q9650 (supports all VT extensions according to Intel) in an EVGA 790i Ultra SLI mobo (EVGA says it supports all the VT extenstions) and despite this my ESXi 4.1 Update 1 Host running on this hardware says "Host does not support passthrough configuration".  I'm more than a little stumped at this point as all I want to do is pass control of my 3ware 9650SE raid card (supported according to VMWare's docs) and its raid arrays to one of my guest OSes (which is running Windows Server 2008 R2).

Now my question is this, is there anything I'm missing configuration-wise to enable this passthrough option, OR is there someway I can accomplish this without using VMDirectPath?

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10 Replies
idle-jam
Immortal
Immortal
‎04-27-2011 05:21 PM

have you enable intel VT on the bios level?

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Malketh
Contributor
Contributor
‎04-27-2011 05:29 PM

Yes I have. I can't believe I forgot to mention that. I even did the trick of disabling it, cold boot, reenable and cold boot.

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DSTAVERT
Immortal
Immortal
‎04-27-2011 05:33 PM

Check that you have the latest BIOS for the MB.

-- David -- VMware Communities Moderator
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idle-jam
Immortal
Immortal
‎04-27-2011 05:35 PM

try the above advise and also for server normally i do a complete power cycle as in powering if off when enabling and disabling VT. you can give it a try ..

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Malketh
Contributor
Contributor
‎04-27-2011 05:39 PM

Yup, latest BIOS is installed. And I've done several full power cycles today.

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Dave_Mishchenko
Immortal
Immortal
‎04-27-2011 06:06 PM

Have you enabled a specific option called Intel VT-d or Directed I/O.   This option is different from Intel VT-x or Virtualization Technology.   Mostlikely the options will be on seperate screens within the BIOS.

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Malketh
Contributor
Contributor
‎04-27-2011 06:44 PM

No such option in the BIOS. I was concerned about that very fact, which is what prompted my call to EVGA's tech support. Their tier 2 guys said it should work.

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AndreTheGiant
Immortal
Immortal
‎04-27-2011 09:26 PM

As written by Dave you need a special family of VT instruction that usually are implemented in motherboard chipset.

You can try with a BIOS upgrade, but maybe your system does not support them.

See also: http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-11089

Andrew | http://about.me/amauro | http://vinfrastructure.it/ | @Andrea_Mauro
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Malketh
Contributor
Contributor
‎04-28-2011 06:51 AM

Okay, that being a strong possibility, is there any other way I can get the VM in question to access the raid card?

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AndreTheGiant
Immortal
Immortal
‎04-28-2011 07:00 AM

No... to see a card the only way is VMDirectPath I/O

Andrew | http://about.me/amauro | http://vinfrastructure.it/ | @Andrea_Mauro
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