PCI Pass through on Dell T105

[gazat2e2]

Hi,

I have just bought a Dell T105 and am learning ESXi (have only used MS stuff before). I've migrated several server on to the Dell and all have gone really well. The performance was so good, i thought i would try virtualising my media center machine, so i only needed extenders to view - I realise that I would not be able to view them directly on RDP. Anyway - I installed it and it has worked brilliantly - performance on my extender is better than when on the physical machine, for watching recorded TV and music ext. I have one problem to overcome - may be a big one though. I need to be able to use the PCI tuner card I have. I am using ESX 4.0 and can see the pass thorugh page. However, it is telling me that the host does not support pass through. I am a little confused and the T105 has an AMD Opteron 1352 4 core processor which is supposed to fully support virtualisation.

Can anyone help - am I missing something really obvious, or have I hit an insurmountable hurdle?

Thanks

Gareth

[Linjo]

You need the VT-D to support pass-through.

I think this is currently only available in the Intel Nehalem processors .

Have a look here for more information:

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsp_4_vmdirectpath_host.pdf

Best regards,

Linjo

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[AndreTheGiant]

To use VMDirectPath you need a motherboard that will support it.

And actually is designed to work with I/O card (storage and network), so maybe your card could not work.

See also:

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsp_4_vmdirectpath_host.pdf

Andre

[gazat2e2]

Guys, thank you for the quick replies to my question - I live in hope however. I understand that the key to allowing passthrough is the CPU architecture, which is supposed to support it. I have read that the Opterons have IOMMU disabled by default and it has to be enabled in the BIOS. The "Troubleshooting for VMDirect Path guide" state that

Some machines might not have this technology enabled in the BIOS by default. Refer to your hardware ocumentation to learn how to enable this technology in the BIOS.

My question is, where do i start with looking if I can do this?- the machine is brand new, has the latest BIOS and the AMD Opteron 64 Bit chip which is supposed to handle it. The is nothing I can see in the documents that came with it, or the documents from Dell on line.

Also, in my searching the web, I have read on that "On AMD's AMD64 platform, the size of the IOMMU can be configured in the system BIOS or, if no IOMMU BIOS option is available, using the 'iommu=memaper' kernel parameter". Unfortunately I have no experience with Linux before this week - Is what they are discussing what I am looking for and feasable for a Microsoft Techy :smileyblush:

I also know that, if by some miricle, I get pass through working, it is likely that the capture card will not work - but I really want to try, as it would be the perfect solution for me, if it works.

Thanks again for any help

Gareth