VMware Cloud Community
Lupo_SHO2
Contributor
Contributor

PCI Passthru no longer works combined with "Expose hardware assisted virtualization" in ESXi 6.7.0U3

  I have a 2012R2 VM, which I use as a nested Hypervisor within ESXi.

It has the "Expose hardware assisted virtualization to the guest OS" option enabled (so I can create Hyper-V VMs) as well as  PCI passthru for a RAID controller.

This VM has worked perfectly fine for a year in ESXi 6.5.0, until I upgraded the host to 6.7.0U3.

Now the ESXi web client tells me that I cannot have any PCI passthru if I enabled "Expose hardware assisted virtualization to the guest OS".

If I uncheck that option, then PCI passthru works fine.

Without that option enabled, I can no longer run VM's within my nested Hyper-V server.

  Is this something that has changed with 6.7.0U3?

If so, why would they make it so you can no longer do this?

Is there any workaround besides going back to 6.5.0?

Thanks for any help or insight!

2 Replies
AhmedIbrahimVMw
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Yes it is changed by VMware Engineering team, and it is no longer supported to enable vhv.enable option and pci passthrough at the same time.

AhmedIbrahimVMw
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

As a workaround, please shut down the VM, then try to add the following two line in the VM configuration file whose extension is vmx:

vhv.allowPassthru="TRUE"

vhv.enable="TRUE"

Once you save the changes, re-register the VM using vim-cmd command, or remove it from the inventory, and add it again.

This should allow you to power on the VM with both Nested Virtualization and PCI Passthrough options enabled, however it's not supported by VMware GSS.