Storage controller passthrough

[scmeis1]

My Current set up for this project.

Case: NORCO RPC-4220

PSU: Corsair TX750W CMPSU-750TX 750W

CPU: AMD Phenom II 1055T

MOBO Gigabyte GA-890FXA-UD5

Memory: G.SKILL Rip Jaws F3-10666CL9D-8GBRL

Graphics: Radeon HD 4250 (integrated in the chipset)

LSI MegaRAID SAS 16-Port 84016E

2x 150G WD Velociraptors, 10x 2.0T Hitachi drives, 10x 1T WD drives.

I am trying to add the LSI RAID Controller as passthrough device.

However, when I go into Vsphere I go into configuration and advanced It

states passthrough is not enabled for this client. I know my motherboard supports IOMMU, as I enabled it in the bios. I also have virtualization enabled in my bios. However, I cannot pass this controller through to my openfiler VM. I there something I should be adding to ESXi 4.1 to allow for the passthrough, such as Vstorage. Forgive my ignorance, I am a Cisco Network engineer, and I am just learning about VMware. Thank you in advance!

[chadwickking]

Have you checked to ensure that esx 4.1 is supported on your platform?

Here is a good whitebox HCL list:

http://www.vm-help.com/esx40i/esx40_whitebox_HCL.php

to be sure you are rightclicking the VM - edit settings > Hardware Tab > add... SCSI controller - and its not there? can you even change or modify the current one? Also make sure the VM is off to be able to make these changes.

I remember when I was first installing ESX on my box I never confirmed saving the BIOS changes (though I did change them) I though I was saying yes but actually it was asking me if I wanted to exit and disregard changes... kind of confusing...lol.

Some other thread as well with your similar motherboad:

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1550330

Cheers,

Chad King

VCP-410 | Server+

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cwjking

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[chadwickking]

Might want to make sure you are using the correct drivers:

Here is the link for VMware HCL for that specific Raid Controller:

http://www.wmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php?action=search&deviceCategory=io&productId=1...MegaRaid84016e&rorre=0#drivers

it also list the drivers that are compatible so you may have to update them.

Cheers,

Chad King

VCP-410 | Server+

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cwjking

If you find this or any other answer useful please consider awarding points by marking the answer correct or helpful

[scmeis1]

I have tried all the solutions and still no go. Yes that is the entire plan. Use openfiler to use the controller, then my other virtual machine (windows 7) can use the entire 30 terabytes. The other VM would be my web server under CentOS.

[chadwickking]

Well then what Andre said holds true that if you are currently using it then you wont be able to use it for pass through. Now I use openfiler at home and what I did was provisioned all the storage I had locally to it and then just got the iSCSI and NFS rolling on it and since then I have had been rocking. I followed this instructions.

http://www.petri.co.il/use-openfiler-as-free-vmware-esx-san-server.htm#

Version 2.3

http://www.techhead.co.uk/how-to-configure-openfiler-v23-iscsi-storage-for-use-with-vmware-esx

This is how I got my shared storage going with my setup. BUT I also used vmware workstation to provision multiple ESX host and use it in a DRS/HA cluster set up. I only have 60 days with it to get all those features and when I am done testing I do it again and do a different setup. I never use it production always for learning and testing.

Cheers,

Chad King

VCP-410 | Server+

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cwjking

If you find this or any other answer useful please consider awarding points by marking the answer correct or helpful