PCI Passthrough

[simulacra]

I have a virtualized ESXI server that I'd like to see a PCI card installed on it's host. The host is an Intel with (VT enabled) running on Win 7. I'm considering virtualizing the host and then replacing the WIN 7 with ESXI on the bare metal if passthrough cannot work as I have it. Basically, I'd be switching from ESXI running in Win7 to Win7 running in ESXI. But, I want to know if passthrough cannot work with my current setup. Thoughts?

[DSTAVERT]

What is the PCI card you want to pass through? You would need to have vt-d available in the BIOS to have VMdirectpath available to the guest. Please describe the hardware and card.

[simulacra]

VT-D is in the bios and enabled. The PCI is a digium TD120P. This is a telco card, so I doubt vmware has drivers and other stuff for it. I was hoping that it would "magically" work. But, even still, in vSphere it tells me that the host does not do passthrough under the configuration tab.

[DSTAVERT]

Here is the troubleshooting guide for VMdirectpath. http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/10170 There aren't a lot of devices that have specific support for VMdirectpath and I would doubt a communication card would be a good candidate anyway. I would check with Digum and their forums. What server are you using?

[DSTAVERT]

Have a search through these forums for Asterisk. There have been posts in the past albeit not from the hadrware perspective but perhaps you can PM those forum members?