Passthrough

[b1izzard]

I am trying to determine if my ESXi 6.7 hosts have HBA Passthrough enabled without rebooting and going into the HBA settings.  I noticed a section in the ESXi host: Hardware > PCI Devices > All PCI Devices and it lists a Dell HBA330 adapter that the disks are all running off of.  However, in the Passthrough-enabled devices window, it is blank implying that the Dell HBA330 is not passthrough enabled.  That doesn't seem right, as Dell services recently performed the install, so it doesn't make sense that they wouldn't use passthrough as from my understanding, that is the preferred method.  Can anyone please explain what is going on here or direct me on how to verify without a reboot?  Thank you

[TheBobkin]

Hello b1izzard​,

HBA330 is a non-RAID controller - I don't think it is even possible to configure this in a RAID 'personality mode'.

I think you should be able to check this from iDRAC.

Other places this may be visible would be vsanmgmtd.log and/or vsansystem.log (e.g. when Health retest is performed and the disk/controller information is pulled from the nodes).

A quick and dirty way of validating whether a disk is configured as RAID or passthrough is to look at the output of:

# esxcli storage core device list

If there are disks in a RAID mode they will show the controller model instead of the device model and the controllers firmware version under 'Revision' instead of their own (as this is all ESXi sees as the devices are behind a RAID on the controller).

As an aside, I have never looked at that 'PCI Passthrough' page you shared - disk devices are usually just seen and managed under:

Host > Configure > Storage > Storage Devices/Adapters

Bob

[b1izzard]

Thanks for replying Bob.  Here is what it shows in the console for 1 of the cache and 1 capacity drive.  Would you concur that this is in passthrough since it does mention the hard drive model, not the controller?

naa.5002538e103449f7

   Display Name: Local ATA Disk (naa.5002538e103449f7)

   Has Settable Display Name: true

   Size: 1831420

  Device Type: Direct-Access

   Multipath Plugin: NMP

   Devfs Path: /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.5002538e103449f7

   Vendor: ATA

   Model: MZ7LH1T9HMLT0D3

   Revision: HE58

   SCSI Level: 6

   Is Pseudo: false

   Status: on

   Is RDM Capable: true

   Is Local: true

   Is Removable: false

   Is SSD: true

   Is VVOL PE: false

   Is Offline: false

   Is Perennially Reserved: false

   Queue Full Sample Size: 0

   Queue Full Threshold: 0

   Thin Provisioning Status: yes

   Attached Filters:

   VAAI Status: unknown

   Other UIDs: vml.02000000005002538e103449f74d5a374c4831

   Is Shared Clusterwide: false

   Is SAS: true

   Is USB: false

   Is Boot Device: false

   Device Max Queue Depth: 32

   No of outstanding IOs with competing worlds: 32

   Drive Type: physical

   RAID Level: NA

   Number of Physical Drives: 1

   Protection Enabled: false

   PI Activated: false

   PI Type: 0

   PI Protection Mask: NO PROTECTION

   Supported Guard Types: NO GUARD SUPPORT

   DIX Enabled: false

   DIX Guard Type: NO GUARD SUPPORT

   Emulated DIX/DIF Enabled: false

naa.58ce38ee20c6a4fd

   Display Name: Local TOSHIBA Disk (naa.58ce38ee20c6a4fd)

   Has Settable Display Name: true

   Size: 763097

   Device Type: Direct-Access

   Multipath Plugin: NMP

   Devfs Path: /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.58ce38ee20c6a4fd

   Vendor: TOSHIBA

   Model: KPM5XMUG800G

   Revision: B01C

   SCSI Level: 6

   Is Pseudo: false

   Status: on

   Is RDM Capable: true

   Is Local: true

   Is Removable: false

   Is SSD: true

   Is VVOL PE: false

   Is Offline: false

   Is Perennially Reserved: false

   Queue Full Sample Size: 0

   Queue Full Threshold: 0

   Thin Provisioning Status: yes

   Attached Filters:

   VAAI Status: unknown

   Other UIDs: vml.020000000058ce38ee20c6a4fd4b504d35584d

   Is Shared Clusterwide: false

   Is SAS: true

   Is USB: false

   Is Boot Device: false

   Device Max Queue Depth: 254

   No of outstanding IOs with competing worlds: 32

   Drive Type: physical

   RAID Level: NA

   Number of Physical Drives: 1

   Protection Enabled: false

   PI Activated: false

   PI Type: 0

   PI Protection Mask: NO PROTECTION

   Supported Guard Types: NO GUARD SUPPORT

   DIX Enabled: false

   DIX Guard Type: NO GUARD SUPPORT

   Emulated DIX/DIF Enabled: false

[TheBobkin · Accepted solution]

Hello b1izzard​

Actually, not so sure whether the "RAID Level: NA"  is a reliable check or not - I have a vague recollection about some controllers (HPE not Dell ones and may have been driver/firmware specific) showing some misleading field for RAID somewhere.

However from checking this on a daily basis, if you can see the device Vendor/Model/Revision (as opposed to the controllers info for each device in any form of RAID) then these devices are presented in passthrough mode:

   Model: MZ7LH1T9HMLT0D3

   Revision: HE58

   ...

   Vendor: TOSHIBA

   Model: KPM5XMUG800G

   Revision: B01C

Bonus check - both devices are on the vSAN HCL and for the intended purposes (assuming you are using the Toshiba SSDs as Cache-tier) and both using at least/above the minimum firmware:

VMware Compatibility Guide - ssd

VMware Compatibility Guide - ssd

Bob

[b1izzard]

Yes the Toshiba is the cache tier.  Thank you