topic Re: ESXi on DL380G6 and USB Passthrough in Operating System - VMware

ESXi on DL380G6 and USB Passthrough

AndreT_1 — Thu, 27 May 2010 04:44:00 GMT

Hello vmWare experts.

I have a DL380 G6 with ESXi installed on the internal SD card (which is apprently on same controller as the 4 external USB ports and the 1 internal)

I have no problems until I try to set up device pass through. I want to use a USB removable hard drive for actual windows server 2008 backup. This will be aside from backing up the vmware guest files to a NAS. When i set up the pass though ESXi becomes very unresponsive, and the single VM starts to crawl. Has anyone used the pass through with ESXi installed on the SD slot? Im almost tempted to put an additional PCI USB 2.0 card and just forward that to the guest VM perhaps that will work?

Any input is appreciated.

P.S. anyone know what would be a good choice for a PCI USB 2.0 card for the DL380 G6?

Re: ESXi on DL380G6 and USB Passthrough

Uwe Zessin — Thu, 27 May 2010 06:28:00 GMT

I've heard rumors that it should come in ESX 4.1, but it is not in 4.0 and lower.

Re: ESXi on DL380G6 and USB Passthrough

AndreT_1 — Thu, 27 May 2010 06:29:58 GMT

It already works, just not very well when ESXi is installed on an sd card that shares the same controller as the usb ports that are being forwarded.

Re: ESXi on DL380G6 and USB Passthrough

Neil Cummings — Fri, 28 May 2010 08:07:52 GMT

Perhaps try the same on another identical server (if you have the luxuary) that does not have ESX on the SD card, just to see if its related to the OS being on the same bus or not. Perhaps it is not related and possibly a USB driver issue?

Re: ESXi on DL380G6 and USB Passthrough

AndreT_1 — Fri, 28 May 2010 13:03:26 GMT

Haha, I wish i had that luxury :) But I will be trying out a PCI-E USB2.0 card in there, maybe if the USB ports are not on the same controller there won't be a performance issue. Will keep you all posted. Thanks for replies.

Re: ESXi on DL380G6 and USB Passthrough

AndreT_1 — Fri, 28 May 2010 19:01:29 GMT

Ok so I guess the problem WAS in the fact that all 4 of the external ports on the DL380 G6 and the internal USB port plus the SD card slot are all on the same bus. I installed a 4 port PCI Express USB 2.0 card from startech.com, enabled pass through for the card and added a PCI device from that card to my windows 2008 R2 datacenter VM. Performance was not decreased on either the esxi box nor the vm. However I can only get about a 1mb/sec transfer rate from a USB stick to the VM. I'll play around some more, maybe I can tweak it. Will keep everyone posted.