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<blockquote data-quote="fujistick" data-source="post: 598918" data-attributes="member: 65261"><p>Ok, I think I’m going to give up on the idea of having a working Adaptec 3805 RAID card in the same system as one with VT-d enabled for PCI pass-through to a virtual machine.</p><p></p><p>My experiments with Xen to get the RAID card and PCI passthru working together weren’t that successful. Using the linux distro CentOS 5.4, I could install to the raid card, create VM’s & install Vista ok. However, as soon as I tried to enable VT-d functionality by adding the "iommu=1" boot parameter to the grub config file and rebooting, things stopped working properly – disk access problems, kernel panics etc.</p><p></p><p>This leaves me with a few options. One option is to put the RAID card into another system (maybe one of those cheap all-in-one ITX sized motherboards) for all storage, and setup an iSCSI target on it for diskless boot images, etc. This would allow me to setup the PCI passthrough just fine without the RAID card issues.</p><p></p><p>Another option is to not worry about PCI passthrough to a VM and do as pnyberg suggested and put everything in one box and install Windows 7 64-bit. This is probably the path I’ll take. I can still create VM’s using desktop/workstation versions of a hyperviser, just without PCI passthru support. The only problem is I can’t quite fit everything in.</p><p></p><p>I have a dual slot ATI HD 4870 PCIe 16x graphics card, a PCIe 4x Adaptec 3805 RAID card, a PCIe 1x X-Fi sound card and 2 x PCIe 1x TV tuner cards. The intel DX58SO motherboard has slots for all of this plus an old PCI slot, however, the dual slot graphics card covers one of the needed PCIe 1x slots.</p><p></p><p>I can either find a good single slot graphics card to replace the dual slot one, or maybe use something like a PCIe extender cable (e.g. <a href="http://imgs.inkfrog.com/pix/tattoocountry/13373_1.jpg" target="_blank">http://imgs.inkfrog.com/pix/tattoocountry/13373_1.jpg</a>) to access the spare PCIe slot under the dual slot graphics card (if it will fit), and put one of the TV tuners hanging above the spare PCI slot with the low profile bracket that came with the card.</p><p></p><p>Anyway, to summarise what I’ve got to work, and what didn’t:</p><p></p><p><strong>What worked:</strong></p><p></p><p>PCI passthrough of a TV tuner card to a Vista VM using ESXi 4 with MP TV Server installed. This could only be achieved when installed on a SATA drive, not using the RAID card. From memory, the stuttering I mentioned earlier when using my laptop as a client went away when I plugged my laptop into the wired network rather than using WiFi. I didn’t try PCI passthru without the RAID card in Xen, but suspect it would have worked.</p><p></p><p>The onboard SATA and LAN ports on the Intel DX58SO motherboard worked out of the box in ESXi 4.</p><p></p><p><strong>What didn’t work:</strong></p><p></p><p>Getting the Adaptec 3805 RAID card to work at all with VT-d enabled on either ESXi 4 or linux/Xen.</p><p></p><p>Both the motherboard and the RAID card had new BIOS/firmware released in the past month or so, but neither fixed the problem.</p><p></p><p>PCI passthrough didn’t work for every slot on the motherboard. From memory, it didn’t work in the 16x slots. Either the device would not show up in the list of PCI devices to enable for PCI passthrough, or it would either log errors when trying to start a VM with a PCI device assigned to it.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="fujistick, post: 598918, member: 65261"] Ok, I think I’m going to give up on the idea of having a working Adaptec 3805 RAID card in the same system as one with VT-d enabled for PCI pass-through to a virtual machine. My experiments with Xen to get the RAID card and PCI passthru working together weren’t that successful. Using the linux distro CentOS 5.4, I could install to the raid card, create VM’s & install Vista ok. However, as soon as I tried to enable VT-d functionality by adding the "iommu=1" boot parameter to the grub config file and rebooting, things stopped working properly – disk access problems, kernel panics etc. This leaves me with a few options. One option is to put the RAID card into another system (maybe one of those cheap all-in-one ITX sized motherboards) for all storage, and setup an iSCSI target on it for diskless boot images, etc. This would allow me to setup the PCI passthrough just fine without the RAID card issues. Another option is to not worry about PCI passthrough to a VM and do as pnyberg suggested and put everything in one box and install Windows 7 64-bit. This is probably the path I’ll take. I can still create VM’s using desktop/workstation versions of a hyperviser, just without PCI passthru support. The only problem is I can’t quite fit everything in. I have a dual slot ATI HD 4870 PCIe 16x graphics card, a PCIe 4x Adaptec 3805 RAID card, a PCIe 1x X-Fi sound card and 2 x PCIe 1x TV tuner cards. The intel DX58SO motherboard has slots for all of this plus an old PCI slot, however, the dual slot graphics card covers one of the needed PCIe 1x slots. I can either find a good single slot graphics card to replace the dual slot one, or maybe use something like a PCIe extender cable (e.g. [url]http://imgs.inkfrog.com/pix/tattoocountry/13373_1.jpg[/url]) to access the spare PCIe slot under the dual slot graphics card (if it will fit), and put one of the TV tuners hanging above the spare PCI slot with the low profile bracket that came with the card. Anyway, to summarise what I’ve got to work, and what didn’t: [B]What worked:[/B] PCI passthrough of a TV tuner card to a Vista VM using ESXi 4 with MP TV Server installed. This could only be achieved when installed on a SATA drive, not using the RAID card. From memory, the stuttering I mentioned earlier when using my laptop as a client went away when I plugged my laptop into the wired network rather than using WiFi. I didn’t try PCI passthru without the RAID card in Xen, but suspect it would have worked. The onboard SATA and LAN ports on the Intel DX58SO motherboard worked out of the box in ESXi 4. [B]What didn’t work:[/B] Getting the Adaptec 3805 RAID card to work at all with VT-d enabled on either ESXi 4 or linux/Xen. Both the motherboard and the RAID card had new BIOS/firmware released in the past month or so, but neither fixed the problem. PCI passthrough didn’t work for every slot on the motherboard. From memory, it didn’t work in the 16x slots. Either the device would not show up in the list of PCI devices to enable for PCI passthrough, or it would either log errors when trying to start a VM with a PCI device assigned to it. [/QUOTE]
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