Pass through onboard SATA?

U

unrlmth

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 1, 2010
Messages
254
I want to give ESXi a try and am converting my OI fileserver to and ESXi server.

Would it be possible to get a cheap SATA card for the ESXi install and pass through the onboard SATA ports? If so would something like this (LINK) work?

Or would I be better off getting something like a M1015?

This is just for home use and mainly because I want to experiment with ESXi.

Thanks!
 
You need to review the vmware esxi hardware compatibility list aka HCL to confirm that the strorage adapter is supported. I doubt your linked sata card will be visible to esxi. The M1015 should be ok or for even cheaper you can get the br10i.

Some non workstation or server motherboards might have issues with certain sata/sas cards and might also not passthrough onboard sata correctly.

Good luck
 
I converted my file server to ESXi, and my hardware didn't support pass through.

I was successful in getting virtual raw device mapping to work with this command:

vmkfstools -z /vmfs/devices/disks/<name of RAW device> <location to store VMDK>/<RDM name>.vmdk

You will need to enable SSH so that you can putty onto the console to execute the command.
 
Very new to this but I thought exsi could see, for example, the onboard ICHx controller just not in RAID.
 
On my ASRock Z77 board when I passed through the onboard SATA the pci express based ASMedia 1061 2 port sata card stopped working (which had the local datastore connected to it).

So I now have a M1015 inbound.
 
So it did see the onboard just not the 1061? I have one of those as well as it's a decent chip for a $10 card but I wasn't planning to use it in vmware even if I did not just get a M1015 (which I did).
 
wrigleyvillain said:
So it did see the onboard just not the 1061? I have one of those as well as it's a decent chip for a $10 card but I wasn't planning to use it in vmware even if I did not just get a M1015 (which I did).
Click to expand...

I was unable to boot my storage VM as it was on a hard drive attached to the 1061 card, so I can't confirm if the onboard sata was successfully passed through to the VM.

On my asrock Z77 the only onboard passthrough scenario that worked was to passthrough the onboard asmedia 1061 chip (2 ports available to VM), anytime I passed through the onboard sata (6 port) the onboard 1061, or pci-e card 1061 stopped working in ESXi, so maybe with NAS based datastore for the storage VM it would work OK to passthrough the onboard SATA.
 
Man I don't understand this fascination with passthroughs. The advantages in performance are negligible unless your running zfs of some sort. Just run the native DAS.
 
Cool thanks. Ah you have a 1061 onboard as well, that is right (Asrock Z-77E mini here though I am going to run esxi on my i7 870 P55 rig for now).

And @ Wrench, good to know.
 
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