State of PCI passthrough

[Lundgrens]

Hey!

 

What is the state of PCI passthrough on the Gen8? Hardware wise it supports IOMMU/VT-d, but I've heard people have had problems with PCI passthrough still.

 

Is it possible to passthrough the RAID controller to a virtual machine in ESXi or KVM?

 

Is it possible to passthrough a GPU to a virtual machine in ESXi or KVM?

[schoondoggy]

In ESXi I have setup passthrough for a LSI RAID controller to a VM. Not sure about graphics.

[tezray]

I use Esxi 6.5 and an HD 6450 to use Kodi on the bedroom tv it works perfectly fine. But You will need to use the Esxi client to pass through the card then use the web to assign to your VM also remember to reserve all the memory on the pass through options or the VM will not start. I pass the usb through and have a usb dongle in for the remote control. I haven't tried passing through the  Raid as using it for multiple Vms and using raid 10.

I do use an E3 1225 v2 so if you have the standard Celeron cpu you will need to change it to a cpu that has VT-D

[Lundgrens]

1 hour ago, schoondoggy said:

In ESXi I have setup passthrough for a LSI RAID controller to a VM. Not sure about graphics.

 

I mean the internal controller, not a PCI Express one. I should have been more specific. Has anyone done passthrough of the internal controller, without passing through the ODD slot?

 

1 hour ago, tezray said:

I use Esxi 6.5 and an HD 6450 to use Kodi on the bedroom tv it works perfectly fine. But You will need to use the Esxi client to pass through the card then use the web to assign to your VM also remember to reserve all the memory on the pass through options or the VM will not start. I pass the usb through and have a usb dongle in for the remote control. I haven't tried passing through the  Raid as using it for multiple Vms and using raid 10.

I do use an E3 1225 v2 so if you have the standard Celeron cpu you will need to change it to a cpu that has VT-D

 

So it works then? I read somewhere that the PCI Express slot is on the same IOMMU group as something else (the CPU?). Great news if that is the case.

[tezray]

Yes it works great depending what you want it for if for films bitstreaming etc then a cheap hd 5450 or similar works perfectly.

[schoondoggy]

You can't pass through the controller you are running VM's on. You need at least two storage controllers to do passthrough.

[Lundgrens]

9 minutes ago, tezray said:

Yes it works great depending what you want it for if for films bitstreaming etc then a cheap hd 5450 or similar works perfectly.

Great!

 

2 minutes ago, schoondoggy said:

You can't pass through the controller you are running VM's on. You need at least two storage controllers to do passthrough.

So the ODD is connected to the same controller as the 4 bays?

[schoondoggy]

So the ODD is connected to the same controller as the 4 bays?

Yes it is.