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voodooless
Contributor
Contributor

VMDirectPath and ISDN hardware

Hi there,

We are currently looking for new servers and a SAN for a virtualized server environment to consolidate all of the old stuff. In the original estimates were to leave the server that need extra hardware alone. But now I found out about VMDirectPath. This looks very interesting, but information is very limited. I know we need a Nehalem platform to run it... That's not problem.

But hardware support is unclear... The compatibility guide does not have an option to find VMDirectPath compatible devices, so I have nu clue what works, and what not...

Apparently, you can map the memory of any PCI device (or PCIe or PCI-X) to a virtual address, so the vm has direct access to the hardware resource. That would mean that theoretically, any device would work.

What we are mostly interested in, is some ISDN hardware, like the AVM C4. It would be very interesting to get this card running in a virtual environment. Also a USB controller on a separate card would be a nice option.

Are there any other success stories of any other hardware than the Intel 10Gbe that VMWare keeps bragging about?

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11 Replies
voodooless
Contributor
Contributor

Anyone?

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mudha
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

currently only HBA's are supported for VMDirect Path , for NIC Intel 10 G it's a experimental support in 4.0

voodooless
Contributor
Contributor

Okay, but there is a difference between supported and working Smiley Wink That's why I'm asking if there were any other success stories.

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mudha
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

okay you mean to say VMdirectPath is not working with supported HBA's if that is the case, VMware people can clarify it??

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voodooless
Contributor
Contributor

No, I mean that some people might have tried to get things working other than the supported HBA's.

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Dave_Mishchenko
Immortal
Immortal

I've done some sound cards, RAID controllers, and a TV tuner card. During the beta someone did test a ISDN card - don't recall the brand though.

voodooless
Contributor
Contributor

Great, but what are the results?

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Sanjana
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

er.. I may be late on this thread, but I'd like to clarify mudha's statement.

<br>

It's the storage HBAs that are experimental and the nics that are supported.

--sanjana

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

Just to add what Sanjana said,

VMDirectPath in general is designed to operate with a

wide variety of PCI/e devices ranging from HBAs and NICs through to

GPUs, but VMware has done internal qualification only for few NICs and HBAs (based on some customer/partner request/input).

vSphere 4.0 has official support for Intel, Broadcom 10G NICs and

Experimental support for QLogic FC, mulex FC and LSI SAS HBAs.

I am sure people are trying various other forms of devices with VMDirectPath and we have seen most of them to just work even though they are not officially supported. VMware is defintely interested in getting customers input to understand the business needs so that we can consider enhancement to our current support statement for other PCI/PCIe devices.

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mudha
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Does that mean VMware is planning to support more devices under VMDirectPath? if that is case it's good news for the customers..

keep up VMware!!!!! i guess definetly MS would come up with something like this but we would be too far from them like always:)

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

We are looking into that.<!Session data>

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