Getting SMART data from ZFS disks in Proxmox

[karpodiem]

Hi there - I'm using an LSI SAS9211-8I to pass through two disks via Windows Server 2016 to Proxmox (old identical 500GB drives - I'm new to Proxmox and I'm testing things out before I start importing production data) and I'm having a difficult time getting SMART data from the drives.

I used this guide to pass through the disks to Hyper V (pretty straightforward) - Configuring Pass-through Disks in Hyper-V

And this is what the disk look like in the Hyper V manager - Dropbox - 2018-03-10 16_50_47-Hyper-V Manager.png

The zpool is created, everything is working fine - I'm just having a difficult time getting smart data from my drives.

Output from the command 'lstblk' -Dropbox - 2018-03-10 17_02_23-Proxmox on BARCELONA - Virtual Machine Connection.png

The follow is the information that I was returned when entering commands -

entered - smartctl -a /dev/sdb1
(Returned - "Probable ATA device behind SAT layer")

and

entered - smartctl -d sat /dev/db1
(Returned - "ATA device succesfully opened. Use 'smartctl -a' or (or '-x') to print SMART and more information

finally

entered - smartctl -d sat /dev/sdb1 -a
(Returned - "Read Device Identity failed: scsi error unsupported scsi opcode. A mandatory SMART command failed:exiting.
To continue, add one or more '-T permissive' options.

I feel that I'm close, I'm just not entering the correct command though. Any suggestions?

 

[ttabbal]

Are you passing the controller into proxmox via PCI passthrough or exposing the drives to the guest?

If the later, that's your problem. The OS needs to be directly accessing the actual hardware, not an emulation layer.

I've never used hyper-v, so I can't really help much on that side. I don't know if PCI passthrough is even possible, though I suspect it is.

As proxmox is a virtualization host, I would recommend running it on metal.

 

[karpodiem]

Are you passing the controller into proxmox via PCI passthrough or exposing the drives to the guest?

If the later, that's your problem. The OS needs to be directly accessing the actual hardware, not an emulation layer.

I've never used hyper-v, so I can't really help much on that side. I don't know if PCI passthrough is even possible, though I suspect it is.

As proxmox is a virtualization host, I would recommend running it on metal.

Exposing the drives to the guest. What you said makes sense though with respect to Proxmox needing to talk to the HBA card in order to get SMART data. It seems that getting SMART via HBA from Windows, while issuing the SMART commands within the virtualized (Proxmox) environment, isn't possible.

I'm now searching to see if anyone has passed an LSI 9211 HBA flashed to IT mode to virtualized Proxmox, I'll update my post if I find anything.