ESXi 7.0u3 Odd Passthrough Behavior

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kromberg

Active Member
Jan 18, 2021
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Building up a new ESXi server and I am seeing some odd behavior. I have an Intel quad port 1GB NIC installed, specifify the 82571EB one that uses the ne1000 driver. After the initial install all four ports show up in the Physical NIC tab in the Networking section. When I toggle them in passthrough and reboot the server, they are no longer showing up in the Physical NIC tab. The bad thing in the Hardware tab, they are showing 'Enabled / Needs Reboot'. They are stuck in this state no matter how many things the server is rebooted. The also dont show in editing a guest VM for a PCI device. Has anyone seem this before and/or knows what to do to fix it? Good olde google isnt finding anything useful.
 

kromberg

Active Member
Jan 18, 2021
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Here is another oddity I have found with 7.0u3. When trying to add a USB device to a running VM, select the device and press save, I get the following error message:

"Failed to reconfigure virtual machine XXXX. The attempted operation cannot be performed in the current state (Powered on)."

With 6.7u3, USB devices can be added or removed with the VM powered on or off.
 

TRACKER

Active Member
Jan 14, 2019
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Today i've upgraded two of my machines to 7.0u3 and i have similar issue with my quadro P620 in pass through mode.
Under 6.7u3 there were no issues with pass through.
 

kromberg

Active Member
Jan 18, 2021
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From what I have been reading/researching, it looks like one has a better chance of setting passthrough going through vCenter rather than the actual ESXi server. I have tried the 'trick' of trying to toggle the passthrough option on the card, but that doesnt seem to make any difference. Looks like I will need to install vCenter here....
 

TRACKER

Active Member
Jan 14, 2019
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I cannot check right now, but i remember in vCenter graphics card was not listed as device in the list with devices where pass through option is available.
There was separate section for graphics card but no pass through option was listed.
 

986box

Active Member
Oct 14, 2017
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I had similar problem when add new Mellanox Connectx-3. The status was stuck is Enabled/Reboot status. After a number of reboot, it finally showed Enabled.
 

kromberg

Active Member
Jan 18, 2021
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Is the number of reboots between 25 and 834343? My server has been rebooted and/or powered off at least 2 dozen times.
 

zer0sum

Well-Known Member
Mar 8, 2013
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You can always try disabling the ACS check :)
  1. Manage > System > Advanced settings
  2. Set VMkernel.Boot.disableACSCheck to True.
  3. Reboot
 

TRACKER

Active Member
Jan 14, 2019
169
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Here are some screenshots from the vCenter (7.0.3) and ESXi (7.0.3), related to pass-through:
1) the way how graphics card is shown
2) available options for that card
3) pass-through enabled devices list
4) all PCI devices (graphics card is missing there)
5) graphics card listed in ESXi hardware list (directly on host, not via vCenter)
 

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kromberg

Active Member
Jan 18, 2021
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Does anyone know if an USB keyboard can actually be passed through to a VM? I have tried all the google suggestions, but it seems like the hypervisor always grabs it and does not allow it to be assigned to a VM. I have tired 4 different keyboard and all the same behavior.

Also, does anyone know if a USB device can be added/removed to a running VM? I always get the error saying the VM coudl not be saved in its current power state.
 

das1996

Member
Sep 4, 2018
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I too dumped esxi for proxmox, but for other reasons - it didn't support the rtl8125 nic, and pass through was challenging for some other devices.

For those still interested in passing through a keyboard in esxi, it is possible.


I have tested this successfully with 6.7. Don't see why it wouldn't work with 7.x. Read the comments in that blog post for further clarification as the initial instructions were not entirely clear. Good luck