Onboard SATA vs HBA pass through for ESXi all-in-one

Motherboard in question is a Supermicro X9SCM-FO.

Is it possible to pass through the onboard SATA ports (or more precisely the controller) to an ESXi VM? If so, then why are so many recommendations for ESXi + ZFS boxes including an HBA of some sort?

The X9SCM board comes with 6 ports (2x 6Gbps and 4x 3Gbps). Let's say I also have a Intel SASUC8I, 6 hard drives, and 2 SSDs. Wouldn't it make more sense to put the hard drives on the onboard for raidz2, and the SSDs on the SASUC8I for a RAID1 mirror?

1.
you could not pass-through single disk-ports but only pci-devices -
that is the reason for a separate HBA for pass-through and booting from SATA

2.
You may check, if your SATA 6G and 3G are separate pci devices.
If so, you may pass-through one of them.

Check:
- Does ESXI supports this Controller ?
- Does your guest supports the other one ?
- Does the other controller works with ESXi & pass-through ?


Are there any experiences around with ESXi and SB-Chipset?
Maybee you are one of the first to report problems.


Gea

There appears to be an issue with ZFS and the standard virtual disks. There's a thread on here with lopoetve (a VMware employee) working with someone in your situation. They're seeing a 50% hit from native, which is obviously not right... something's wrong there. I believe the performance gains of using pass through is why you see the recommendation, but in this case it appears to potentially be a bug?? Pass through for storage devices is not officially supported, but some people are having success so you can do it at your own peril . Your chipset/cpu need to support vt-x and vt-d in order to use VMDirectPath.

Yeah, I have to say I'm disappointed that lopoetve has disappeared I understand his day job takes priority, but it is really not cool to say the perf should not suck, start doing tests and then vanish. If one is cynical, one might wonder if he got the same results and doesn't want to embarrass vmware by having to admit it I have repro'ed this on two mobos with 4 different virtual OS (OI, SE11, nexentastor and zfsguru), so I'm pretty sure there is something there... It also does not seem to be vmfs3 related, since my LSI HBA (4-port) supports raw device lun mapping, so I mapped all 4 sata drives to the VM and retested. Same (approx) 50% hit.

danswartz said:

Yeah, I have to say I'm disappointed that lopoetve has disappeared I understand his day job takes priority, but it is really not cool to say the perf should not suck, start doing tests and then vanish. If one is cynical, one might wonder if he got the same results and doesn't want to embarrass vmware by having to admit it I have repro'ed this on two mobos with 4 different virtual OS (OI, SE11, nexentastor and zfsguru), so I'm pretty sure there is something there... It also does not seem to be vmfs3 related, since my LSI HBA (4-port) supports raw device lun mapping, so I mapped all 4 sata drives to the VM and retested. Same (approx) 50% hit.

Click to expand...

I don't think you're right about trying to avoid embarassing his employer. People would respect admitting you have a bug and moving to fix it whilist giving feedback to the person they've been working with in the open forum. I'm sure he's very busy, and if we keep the thread active when we see him come around again -- you guys can pick up where you left off.

On topic -- it would be interesting if you did indeed have the ability use VMDirectPath so we could see the difference there across all the different varities you tested out.

Well, I guess I'm not as generous as you. I've worked at more than one company where upper management was more concerned about not looking bad than admitting they have a problem and fixing it. As far as being busy, how hard would it have been to drop in for a quick post to the effect of "i concede we have an issue here, but am too busy to get to this for awhile. i will touch base occasionally about the status..." or some such? Keep in mind that perception of how something is being handled can be very important, and the payoff in being honest and forthcoming about issues like this pays off in credibility down the road...

He has mentioned bugs and issues before on other topics. He's busy. A lot of VMware people post on other forums and Twitter about issues and bugs. VMware doesn't hide things.

You're probably right. Just saying that dropping in for 30 seconds would certainly not hurt.

danswartz said:

You're probably right. Just saying that dropping in for 30 seconds would certainly not hurt.

Click to expand...

There are times I go two weeks without dropping in here due to work. HardForum is down on my list of responsibilities. Not easy to do if you're working 14 or 16 hours a day.

Netjunkie, this is apples and oranges. There are forums I don't visit for weeks on end either. The difference: they aren't forums where I was actively participating, trying to address a serious reported performance issue. And then... gone. Again, a 30-second visit to say "I'm really busy with the day job - I'll get to this when I can - thanks for your patience..." is not a lot to ask...

danswartz said:

Netjunkie, this is apples and oranges. There are forums I don't visit for weeks on end either. The difference: they aren't forums where I was actively participating, trying to address a serious reported performance issue. And then... gone. Again, a 30-second visit to say "I'm really busy with the day job - I'll get to this when I can - thanks for your patience..." is not a lot to ask...

Click to expand...

You've got to be kidding me. Do you ever wonder why people from vendors rarely engage in these non-official forums? Attitudes like this. I don't get paid to come to HF and answer questions and help people... As soon as people expect it then I'm gone. Life comes up. There are days when I get pulled in to other projects for weeks and I'm sure lopoetve is the same. VMware has a LOT going on right now so whether it's work or family it's none of our business and no one's expectation he deliver.

If you have a performance problem call VMware and open a ticket. Simple as that. You get what you pay for on a community forum like this. You have no SLA here.

NetJunkie said:

You've got to be kidding me. Do you ever wonder why people from vendors rarely engage in these non-official forums? Attitudes like this. I don't get paid to come to HF and answer questions and help people... As soon as people expect it then I'm gone. Life comes up. There are days when I get pulled in to other projects for weeks and I'm sure lopoetve is the same. VMware has a LOT going on right now so whether it's work or family it's none of our business and no one's expectation he deliver.

If you have a performance problem call VMware and open a ticket. Simple as that. You get what you pay for on a community forum like this. You have no SLA here.

Click to expand...

ZING.

Damn man, sore spot detected . I agree with you, but I'm surprised you took the time to even say what you did. I for one hope you never stop coming on here, not because I expect it, but because I like seeing and getting your input. Lopoetve, we love you too, [H] forum unite.

Wow, I sure didn't mean to push any buttons, sorry if I did. For what it's worth, I work in the software support business myself. I don't know how to make this any clearer: I DON'T expect any free support from vmware or any other vendor. I do know, from personal and 2nd hand experience that when you (as a representative of your company) do participate in forums like this, you are not seen as Mr X, but as Mr X, acting in the name of company Y. I know I am not the only person to report the performance discrepancy I did, and when someone here in the name of vmware contradicts our experiences, we are understandably wanting to know what is going on (in my case, I was doing nothing unusual at all, so by his account, this should not have been happening.) I have had a bad experience with a different company which led me to believe the support person was not being honest with the public (either on his own or by company direction.) And his last action was to disappear off the forum rather than follow up as promised. I'm sorry if I came across as slamming vmware or lopoetve personally - that was never intended. Just saying from my PoV if I were on the other side of the keyboard, I'd not want there to be any question as to my integrity or my employer's, so I would have left a placeholder post explaining why I was not following up. Sorry

danswartz said:

I do know, from personal and 2nd hand experience that when you (as a representative of your company) do participate in forums like this, you are not seen as Mr X, but as Mr X, acting in the name of company Y.
...
Just saying from my PoV if I were on the other side of the keyboard, I'd not want there to be any question as to my integrity or my employer's, so I would have left a placeholder post explaining why I was not following up

Click to expand...

There's a difference between someone who is paid to participate in a community forum versus someone who so happens to work for a tech company, is a member of a community, and makes it public that said person works for said company.

I've personally never spoken with lopoetve, but as a long time lurker and viewing his (or her) posts, I am pretty sure lopoetve falls under the latter. It's not lopoetve's job to come to forums and answers questions, but he does as a member of the community, not a representative of his company.

Of course I could be completely wrong.

For one thing, I never said the guy in my case was being paid to participate in the forum - he did it on his own free time. For another, if you have a job in a tech company go ask an exec if he agrees with your assertion that you are not a representative of the company (in the specific situation where you have identified yourself as an employee...)