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?
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.
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.
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?
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?