zBook 15 G2 Home Lab

[paintballer991]

Yes i know this is not supported by VMWare and HP/HPE but i have an HP 8570W currently running 6.5 with all hardware being recognized and working BUT i have this zBook with M.2 SSD and a SATA spinning disk with 32GB's so it should be a solid home lab laptop to run some VM's.

My current issue, which i'm not sure if anyone can help with is all of the hardware from the laptop is recognized and working EXCEPT for the PCIe "Z Turbo" M.2 SSD. Now i don't know much about the actual drivers and VIB's for VMWare except how to add them via SSH or Web UI.

Does anyone know if the Z Turbo PCIe hardware has some sort of driver or VIB or something that i could add to the 6.7 or even 6.5/6.0 ESXi for it to work with the SSD controller? Again im not much of a technical person for something like this. I am thinking about converting to Hyper-V but man i really really hate using it.

If someone has some ideas i could try or maybe some drivers/VIBs i could test out that'd be awesome. I haven't found anything helpful from vibsdepot.

Laptop:

HP ZBook 15 G2 Mobile Workstation Product Specifications | HP® Customer Support

Hardware info via Web UI Hardware tab:

Device Name: 88SS9183 PCIe SSD Controller

Device LIsting Name: Marvel Technology Group Ltd 88SS9183 PCIe SSD Controller

Others:

Pericom Corporation PCI bridge

Intel Lynx Point AHCI controller

Intel 8 Series C220 Series Chipset PCIe

Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen PCIe x16 Controller

I'm pretty sure this is in the correct section, if not please let me know.

-Thanks

[paintballer991]

Side note also, how hard it possible would it be to try to create a driver VIB if i have a linux/debian driver for the controller?

I've seen this: https://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2012/09/creating-custom-vibs-for-esxi-50-51.html

But that is for a firewall rule, im still not sure what all would be needed to correctly make a VIB that has the driver.

I don't see a driver from HP specifically for the storage controller but im pretty sure Ubuntu has a proprietary driver that will work with the controller.(no verification on that) Would i be able to extract that driver if it does work with the controller and make a VIB for it?

[paintballer991]

One more extra info post.

Double checked the storage controllers page and it does seem to show the PCIe controller for the M.2 SSD

vmhba1

88SS9183 PCIe SSD Controller

Unknown

vmw_ahci

But i guess that specific driver does now work? Is there a way to force it to try different drivers on the system?

[xinl]

Hi mate, hope you have solved the issue. Anyway i have exactly same situation on my Zbook 15 G2 with ESXi 6.5 U2.

The resolution for me is disabling the VT-D function in BIOS. then everything goes fine.