ESXi 5.0 on Lenovo TS140 / C224 Chipset

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luv2chill

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Mar 2, 2008
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Hi all,

Okay so I just picked up one of the Xeon E3-based Lenovo TS140 servers. Cheap machine and will take up to 32GB of RAM which was my chief complaint about my old PowerEdge T110 (limited to 16GB).

I have no need for any of the features that ESXi 5.1 and 5.5 bring to the table. Furthermore I already have a license for ESXi 5.0 and since I use VMDirectPath a lot I like that 5.0 isn't picky on what it will pass through like 5.1 & 5.5 are.

My problem is that 5.0 doesn't seem to have support for the C224 Haswell chipset. It installs fine (so long as I have an old Intel NIC in one of the slots) but it doesn't see the onboard SATA controller and all the devices in "Configure Passthrough" show as "Unknown" (I think they would still pass through OK, ESXi just doesn't know what they are). This makes perfect sense since 5.0 is a couple years old at this point.

I tried installing 5.1 U1 onto a different USB stick and all is swell there--it picks up the SATA controller and all the devices in passthrough are named properly "Haswell HD Audio Controller" etc.

I know using ESXi-Customizer or just adding .vibs to a running install works for adding in things like NICs but is there any way I can inject support for this chipset into my 5.0 installer disc or into my running system?

If so, can someone point me to where I would find the necessary packages for this and if I need to use any different procedure than what is used for adding NIC drivers?

Sorry for the basic question. I've managed to learn just enough about ESXi to know the basics but haven't ventured much further (yet). Much appreciate any input on this.
 
I just tried 5.0U3 and now all the devices in Configure Passthrough are named properly but it still doesn't see my onboard AHCI SATA ports.

5.1 does see them. Can anyone help me identify what driver I need to try to grab?
 
Thanks for the reply lopoetve. The reason why I was wanting to stick with 5.0 is that VMDirectPath works without issues in that version. 5.1 and 5.5 have introduced complications to hardware passthru I wanted to avoid.

However, I am happy to report that 5.1U2, released a couple of days ago has fixed the issue with USB controllers becoming "un-passed-thru" after reboot. So I am indeed just using 5.1 now rather than trying to cobble together drivers into a 5.0 setup.
 
Hi luv2chill, I'm in the same boat as you are. I picked up the TS140 with Xeon E3-1225v3 just 4 days back and I'm replacing an old T110 (with Xeon X3430). I had the T110 running ESXi 5.5u1. It had several updates starting from ESXi 4.5. From the beginning T110 did not support VT-d in the BIOS and that was a problem for me to passthru any devices. I had pfSense, WHS 2011, FreeNAS and other *nux VMs running on that box. I had a separate pentium based low profile desktop with Win 8.1 with media center as my HTPC.

What I want to do is consolidate all the functions to this TS140. I had the same problem in installing ESXi 5.5u1 (the install will error out saying there is no NIC available in the system). Fortunately I already had Intel PCIe NIC installed in the T110 that was assigned to pfSense VM (T110 was my main router too). I popped in the intel nic to install 5.5u1 on the TS140 and then enabled the on-board NIC using the net-e1000e-2.3.2.x86_64.vib (from this link https://communities.vmware.com/thread/454771?start=0&tstart=0). I think by this time you would have got it working. I also added a Radeon HD6450 PCIe card that I was able to successfully passthru and use it as the display in the Win 8.1 VM (HTPC function)

With 5.5u1, the on-board SATA is not available for passthru. Have you found a solution for this? I was not able to successfully passthru USB controllers too and get it working in Win 8.1 guest. So, I've ordered a PCIe based USB card. Have to see if that solves the problem of passing thru the USB. I want to use the keyboard and IR receiver and use the Win 8.1 VM as a normal desktop. My cable receiver is a HDHomerun Prime that works on LAN so no worries of passing thru that.

Let me know how you progressed with your TS140.
 
Bit of an old thread but picked a couple of TS140's up last week and wondering if anyone had managed to get the onboard SATA available to passthru in VMWare 5.5 U1?

As for the previous post, I flashed the BIOS to FBKT82AUS and now the following are available for passthru:-

VJMsbOt.jpg


Don't know if the later revison fixed the issue with USB but they are visible in my rigs at this BIOS level.

As for the network issue, I did the following to inject the correct NIC driver so the ESXi 5.5u1 install would pick up the internal one correctly without needing a supported NIC to hand.

Downloaded VMware-ESXi-5.5U1-Rollup_2ISO.iso from VMWare
- Downloaded net-e1000e-2.3.2.x86_64.vib from this thread -https://communities.vmware.com/thread/454771
- Used ESXi-Customizer from http://www.v-front.de/p/esxi-customizer.html#download
- Pointed ESXi-Customizer at the ESXI iso and the net-e1000e-2.3.2.x86_64.vib I downloaded and created the new iso
- Burnt the iso and booted the TS140 from it. Onboard NIC now recognised.
- Installed ESXi 5.5 to the supplied USB stick
 
How is the performance on the internal NIC? I have a PCI Pro/1000 GT in mine now and have been wondering if it was worthwhile to use the onboard.
 
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