esxi4 or vsphere 4.1 support pci cards???

[JesterJeff69]

Ok so i know in vmware workstation and vmware server I can run any hos OS... and install a guest OS and get say my dual serial pci card working...

get my usb HUD devices working...

at one point i had my home automation running in a VM and it worked great...

a coworker was saying that eventually vsphere will support pci and pcie cards... as in if you had a geforce 9800gtx in the server.. you could allocate that physical nvidia card to your vms...

anyone know how far out we are from seeing that?

i have a CCTV card that i would love to have work in a vm environment....my goal right now is to run one server with my current stuff (windows home server, homeseer home automation, cctv) and i will get there...

however i cant virtualize it due to the cctv card....

any insights on the future>?

[Dave_Mishchenko · Accepted solution]

vSphere has a feature called VMDirectpath. The feature has a requirement that the host support Intel Directed I/O (VT-d) or AMD IOMMU. With VMDirectpath you can pass a PCI device directly into a virtual machine. The list of supported devices is limited to a few NICs and HBAs as the primary goal of the feature is to enable a high level of performance by allowing the VM to bypass the virtualization layer for these types of devices.

The list here includes unsupported devices that have been tested.

Dave

VMware Communities User Moderator

Now available - vSphere Quick Start Guide

Do you have a system or PCI card working with VMDirectPath? Submit your specs to the Unofficial VMDirectPath HCL.