In ESXi a PCIe device works but isn't visible in lspci

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zachj

Active Member
Apr 17, 2019
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I've just installed an Alpine Ridge Thunderbolt 3 PCIe adapter in my ESXi host and on the very first boot ESXi saw the card and I was able to mark it for passthrough.

On all subsequent boots the thunderbolt adapter is just completely missing according to ESXi; it's not listed in the hardware tab on the host client and it's not listed if I run lspci...it's like it doesn't exist.

Meanwhile I've got my USB keyboard/mouse plugged into the thunderbolt card and both work just fine in BIOS. So the card still works.

Anyone have any brilliant ideas for why the thunderbolt card works in BIOS but ESXi says it doesn't exist?