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ESXi SATA controller passthrough issue

J

jinx099

n00b
Joined
Dec 11, 2003
Messages
11
I have a FreeBSD system with a 4 disk RAID-Z array that I would like to migrate to an ESXi 5 server. I have a complete system setup for ESXi that I am currently just testing with for now, and it is completely independent of the other host.

My current ESXi setup is this:

AMD FX-8120
ASUS M5A99X Evo motherboard
16GB DDR3
Intel Gigabit pci-e NIC
SYBA SY-PEX40039 SATA III controller (Asmedia 1061 chipset)
4x SATA hard drives to play with
ESXi installed on 16GB flash drive

My plan for this was to use the onboard SATA controller for the VM via pci passthrough, and then run other VMs through ESXi with either the ASM1061 controller, the onboard JMicron controller (JMB362/363), or possibly some other inexpensive SATA controller??

I am having a few issues with the setup. First, The JMicron controller does not seem to be supported in ESXi, though it does appear to be able to be used with pci passthrough. The ASM1061 controller does work out of the box with ESXi. However, when I enable passthrough on the onboard sata controller, the ASM1061 card stops working with the ESXi host. The same thing happens the other way around, when I enable passthrough on the ASM 1061 controller, the onboard sata controller no longer works with the ESXi host. This does NOT happen when I passthrough the onboard jmicron controller.

So ideally, I'd like to get this ASM1061 card working and able to be used by ESXi, while the onboard sata controller is set to passthrough. Any ideas on why this is not working, or any ideas to troubleshoot this? I certainly have IOMMU enabled, and ESXi recognizes it. I've tried upgrading to the latest BIOS. I've also tried swapping the ASM1061 and the intel pci-e cards between the 2 pci-e x1 slots, though I have not tried all of the other pci-e slots (will do if necessary).

Less ideally, I've come up with a few ideas for solutions. I have another jmicron based 2 port sata card. I did try this card as well, and it appeared to passthrough fine, but it caused a very long delay while booting ESXi while loading the AHCI module, so I'm a little wary of using this. But I think I could passthrough that, plus the onboard Jmicron controller to the VM, and use the onboard sata for ESXi.

Possibly even less ideally, I noticed some strange behaviour with the onboard sata controller when using IDE mode instead of AHCI. When IDE mode is set, and you enable passthrough on the controller, the IDE ports still show up to ESXi. I don't want to do this, but I possibly could exploit that by enabling IDE on ports 5 and 6 for use in ESXI, then passthrough the controller (AHCI on ports 1-4) for the VM guest.

Anyways, I'm kind of stuck and could use some advice. I'd appreciate any feedback.
 
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I've generally heard that the onboard sata controllers don't pass through too friendly, and can often have odd glitches. Another possibility could be with your IOMMU - a lot of desktop mb manufacturers appear to have a halfbaked implementation and that could be causing an issue.
 
Had been there :|
FX4100 with GigaByte MB , which has 4 Marvell SATA 6G ports and 6 AMD 990FXA NB/SB SATA 6G( I think 6G not 3G) ports

I disable AMD SATA ports and set Marvell to AHCI. it works OK not smoothly.

the best solution for me was: bought M1015 ~$60-$70 and flashed with the newest firmware from LSI.
I should bought M1015 HBA along before would saved me not spending much time on how to make work pass-through ...
 
As stated previously, using On-board SATA controllers for passthrough is not a great idea, when they were talking about using PCI/PCI-Express Passthrough first of all make sure if you have in your bios a VT-IOMMU or IOMMU or VT-Passthrough (if exists) enabled this will provide better results in passing through cards to underlying VMs,

Personally i would suggest using a tride and true chipset against the IOMMU for the best results like a LSI 1068-E Chipset, you can get these fairly cheap and has had driver implementation in Linux/Unix/Solairs for Ages...

I picked me up a few ibm BR10i cards (maybe IBM but they are LSI) and flashed them with IT Firmware .30 pass the card through to my underlying Nexenta OS with a Software Raid Z2 on 8 2TB Drives for Storage and it has worked flawlessly for the past year and a half.
 
I have exactly same problem. I just pick up a cheap SYBA SY-PEX40039 SATA III controller and use it for datastore and passthrough onboard AHCI, M1015 controllers.

The Syba working fine without anything passthrough, but if i set either onboard or m1015 passthrough, esxi not recognized the Syba anymore
 
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