Passthrough of Intel AX200/AX201 unsuccessfully on ESXi 7.x

[IcWind]

Hi everyone, this is my first post here so I hope i'm not doing anything wrong.

I'm going to passthrough my WiFi card AX201 to Windows 10 VM on ESXi 7. I have toggled Passthrough on and rebooted the host. It seemed nothing wrong. I added the PCI device AX201 to Windows 10 VM and booted, however, the AX201 can't start up. There is a yellow bang with AX201 driver in device manager. I also tried it in Ubuntu and the same issue. 

I found some people with same situation using AX200 card on ESXi 6.7/7.X. 

My Env:

Software: ESXi 7.0U2a

Hardware: Intel NUC10i7FNH

Wireless Card: Intel® Wi-Fi 6 AX201

[wsejdtd]

Is yours solved? , I ran into the same problem with ax210.

[Arthos]

lsWind,

Could you share windows 10 VM logs. We can check if there is a problem in device initialization.

Also, Windows 10 has default drivers. You can download the device specific driver online and install. Alternatively, try to troubleshoot that yellow bang in device manager itself.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/update-drivers-in-windows-10-ec62f46c-ff14-c91d-eead-d71....

Thanks.

[rah322]

I too am having a hard time getting an AX210 to properly initialize in both Win11 & Win10. 

I was able to toggle Passthrough in 7.0u2 & the device was properly identified in Win11.  A recent upgrade of my ESXi box to 7.0u3 did manage to update the PCI Description to "Intel Corporation Wi-Fi 6 AX210 160MHz"; however, the VMs still complain that they cannot start the device.  

This device cannot start. (Code 10)

{Operation Failed}
The requested operation was unsuccessful.

Device PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2725&SUBSYS_00248086&REV_1A\4&2509f6e&0&00A8 had a problem starting.

Driver Name: oem28.inf
Class Guid: {4d36e972-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}
Service: Netwtw10
Lower Filters:
Upper Filters: vwifibus
Problem: 0xA
Problem Status: 0xC0000001

I have removed the driver and device several times. 

I'm running the latest Intel provided Driver Version 22.130.0.5 (dated 3/15/2022).  

I'm assuming it'll be a while before these issues are ironed out.  I've plans to stand up another dedicated test box (non-VM) with another AX210 (for Wi-Fi 6E testing) to see if this is strictly a VM issue or an OS issue.  I've heard from others that Win10 & Win11 don't quite play nicely with the Intel released drivers.

Best of luck.

Env:
Software: Lenovo Customized Image ESXi 7.0 Update 3 (based on ESXi 7.0 VMkernel Release) 
Hardware: ST50 (ThinkSystem) - Type 7Y48

[xperimental]

Same problem here. The device is found in every client but can't be startet.

[AoiKagase]

Is there any way this problem can be resolved?
I am using an AX210 and have the same problem.

[benevida]

I know this post is stale, but I'm having the same problem.  I'm using ESXi 8.0 Update 1, but the situation is the same.  Has anyone found a resolution to this?

My Env:

Software: ESXi 8.0 Update 1

Hardware: Gigabyte MC62-G40 / Threadripper PRO 5955WX

Wireless Card: Intel® Wi-Fi 6E AX201

[lamw]

I recently took a look at my 12th and 13th Gen Intel NUC which comes with AX211 WiFi and I'm also observing the same issue.

Since passthrough of Intel iGPU on Windows has a similiar experience as described here, I decided to explore Linux using Ubuntu to see if this would even work, since this was the trick for getting Intel iGPU passthrough to work when using Ubuntu and their Linux drivers. 

There are TON of threads online with all sorts of issues due to the Intel WifI driver or firmware across various Ubuntu releases. I too saw this as I wasn't able to get Ubuntu 20.04 or 22.04 to see AX211 OOTB and I tried various backports of Intel Linux drivers + updating to latest Linux firmware but no dice like most online posts. 

I was about to call it quits and I recall seeing Ubuntu 23.04 was released not too long ago and decided to give it one more go and to my surprise, the device was successfully probed and it attempted to load OOTB driver BUT it ended with UCODE -110, which I believe is firmware issue ... so this may not be driver related (could still be) but something about firmware. 

TBH, passthrough on some of these consumer Intel devices are quite finicky and issues seems to boil down to the drivers they've got which aren't compatible in a virtualized environment, the iGPU on Windows issue is a great example where the exact same device works fine for Ubuntu using their Intel drivers. 

Without Intel support, I suspect any of the AX2xx passthrough will not work and typically these are found in consumer platforms like the Intel NUC which aren't on VMware HCL and aren't officially supported, so behaviors like these can and will be expected

[stoutjeremy88]

I too am having issues passing an Intel AX210/AX200 to Win and Linux VMs and I believe I have narrowed the issue down to the fact the Intel driver is expecting the wifi chip and the USB Bluetooth. 

I have tried passing both to a VM but no luck. 

So it looks like ESXI needs to fully release the USB part of the AX2xx cards and be able to PCI passthrough or the Intel drivers needs to continue loading even if the thee USB Bluetooth is missing.  

Any ideas on how to get ESXI not to pick up the USB Bluetooth and pass it through as a PCI device? 

[Brimur1]

FYI I saw all the same and it seems to be Intel only, probably related to CNVi. I am using an Intel chipset in my ESxi host but it still wont work however I have other Wifi 6E A+E AMD cards (RZ616  and RZ608 ) that work fine when passed through. 

[jhagege]

Hi did you find a solution? 
Thanks