VT-D / IOMMU Question

[Zarathustra[H]]

So, I've never played with it before, but I am considering building a ESXi server, and I ahave an IOMMU question.

My understanding is that with VT-d the benefit is that you can assign hardware you install to the virtual machines directly, so they don't have to go through an emulation layer.

Can you do this with any hardware, or does it need to be specifically designed with IOMMU in mind?

If it needs to be designed with IOMMU in mind, how do I know if an expansion card is compatible? What's the terminology to look for?

There is a surprising lack of layman-style documentation on this subject out there.

Much obliged,
Matt

 

[bAMtan2]

the surprising lack of documentation is because this feature is so new that almost nobody has it yet, which means almost no software or hardware is developed or tested with it yet

so the answer to your question is: good luck chuckm you'll need it

 

[DuronClocker]

I believe VMware has a list of what they support for Vt-d/IOMMU.

I've had no problems with my IBM M1015 nor any Intel NICs.

From what I've read, graphics cards and TV tuners don't tend to work so well, though it seems to be getting better than it used to.

What are you looking to do exactly?

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

I believe VMware has a list of what they support for Vt-d/IOMMU.

I've had no problems with my IBM M1015 nor any Intel NICs.

From what I've read, graphics cards and TV tuners don't tend to work so well, though it seems to be getting better than it used to.

What are you looking to do exactly?

I plan on replacing my home server with a ESXi box, that in addition to serving as my NAS, will run pfSense and untangle. I ahve heard people trying this in the past have had jitter issues resulting from it, so I'm hoping that assigning the NICs directly to the VM's (and going a little overkill on the CPU, I plan on using a i5-2500T) will help.

I also have a Startech PEXESATA2 eSATA controller I'm hoping to direct map to the VM using IOMMU for my linux NAS server.

 

[LstBrunnenG]

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1668281