ESXi

I tried to write the first occurance off as a fluke, but I just started over on the same equipment, recreating a lab environment...

it occured again.  When I try to enable passthrough on an lsi 9271-8i, then then reboot the host...I completely lose the management network.  I tried resetting the ip address, reloading the services, nothing works.

I was in a hurry the first time, and simply re-installed esxi, and was able to get passthrough working after the fresh install.  This time, I actually took out the raid card after the hang, and rebooted.  The management came back to life.

I'll keep posting on what else I try, and what fixes this.

installed from iso:

VMware-VMvisor-Installer-5.1.0.update01-1065491.x86_64

I forgot to mention the first time, I enabled passthrough on 2 cards at once.  The second time, I tried one card at a time, and it worked(but I don't know whether to attribute that to the fresh install of the esxi, or the order of things)

I was able to get back the managment by removing the said cards, and booting.  When I rebooted to add the cards back, the mangement connected in vsphere client...and all passthrough was again disabled.

trying another attempt.

yes, it worked...enabled passthrough on both devices, and rebooted...they both show up as available to passthrough.

interesting...this time it's not the management interface, but another storage controller that is not available now.  seems like passthrough on this system is twitchy.

https://www-ssl.intel.com/content/www/us/en/server-systems/server-system-r2200gz.html?

reboot fixed that issue as well.