SATA AHCI controller passthrough for HPE ML110 Gen10 server

[ldfandian]

I just bought a new HPE ML110 Gen10 server with HPE customized vmware esxi 7.0.2 installed. The server has 8 LFF drive slots available, and one slot has been occupied by a SSD drive (with esxi system installed).

In the esxi management web, I am trying to passthrough the "Intel Corporation Lewisburg SATA AHCI Controller" to my truenas vm, but the passthrough button is disabled (grey out).

My question is:

1. does "Intel Corporation Lewisburg SATA AHCI Controller" support SATA passthrough from esxi to truenas vm ?

2. is it possible to use one slot (out of the eight LFF drive slots) as the system drive, but passthough the remaining seven 3.5 SATA hard drives to truenas vm on the same time? or, do I have to move the system drive to another seperate PCIE storage extension card (e.g. the M.2 SSD enablement option, or other PCIE SSD extension card)?

Any feedbacks are appreicated.

[support_s]

System recommended content:

1. HPE ProLiant ML110 G5 Server - Document List

2. Advisory: HPE Hard Disk and Solid State Drives - Firmware Update Fails When Drives Are Connected to an AHCI Controller

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[ldfandian]

how is the reply related to my question? I am sorry that I don't get your point.

[simon73]

Yes it is possible to pass the whole controller, with ALL the disk  connected to a VM. You cannot reserve one or more disk to the host.

You have to edit a file on ESXI, this:

/etc/vmware/passthru.map

and add relevant entry for SATA AHCI controller. As I already done this step, this is the couple of lines you have to add:

# Intel Lewisburg SATA AHCI Controller [AHCI mode]
8086 a182 d3d0 default

Reboot server and you are done...but now you have a new little problem: you have to find the way to create a new datastore that is not on the AHCI SATA controller! Probably you can force the use of a USB key as datastore...but my experiment stopped here

My next step is to add a cheap LSI2008 controller and passthrough this to a VM...but please let me know your findings, if any, with integrated SATA controller.

[ldfandian]

Thanks for the valuable feedback. I am playing with esxi RDM now, and it is probably a better (more flexible with little performance degrade) solution for me.

发自我的iPhone

[BPSingh]

Hi, 

Greetings!

Please let us know if you have any further queries with regards to ML110 Gen10 server.

Regards, 
Bhupendra 

[epiphanyplx]

As a heads up to anyone who might find this in the future:

I added the entry listed above to ML350 Gen10 ESXi 8.0 and it didn't like it

Purple screen of death, in the process of trying something like this to undo the change: https://communities.vmware.com/t5/ESXi-Discussions/How-to-disable-ESXi-Passthrough-my-findings/m-p/2732447