Hi mrkrad,
Not sure if you are addressing me but I will give my answers.
This was not anything to do with pushing network cards. I was hoping to get the onboard LSI 2308 sas/sata controller working via pci passthough to a VM. I want to do this in order to help me build what people seem to call an all-in-one.
For my all-in-one, I hope to have the following:
- a hypervisor so I can run virtual machines for home use and for testing different software versions and operating systems
- an VM running an operating system that does zfs (and specifically zfs - not something zfs-like) well so it is stable and I can make use of various zfs features, eg data integrity, snapshots, file system compression, maybe even deduplication. In order to do this it needs somewhat direct access to the disk controller via pci passthough. This would serve various zfs shares by nfs and possibly CIFS and AFP for use by the hypervisor as a datastore and by my VMs and other computers on my home network.
- a vm used to run mythtv backend that can access my dvb-t pci cards (TV cards), and also one of the usb controllers via pci passthough to access my dvb-t usb device.
- a vm used to run mythtv frontend that can access my pcie graphics card with pci passthrough for output to my tv, and can also access a second usb controller via pci passthrough for access to my usb remote control dongle and the async usb sound device of my amplifier. Both mythtv functions could be on one VM rather than two if possible.
- a vm running debian linux for other general server duties eg mail server, web server.
- other VMs as desired.
- consolidation of various servers into one box.
No guarantees I can get the above working but I will try very hard. I want the above set up rather than trying to get it all working in a single operating system installed on bare metal for the following reasons:
- not sure a single operating system exists that can do all that - not interested in the zfs on linux in its current state.
- I want to be able to do security updates to operating systems safely and easily - with an easy way to revert. My current mythtv server installed on bare metal was _very_ fiddly to get working right with suitable performance and functionality - so it now never gets updated. My mail server is on the same box so scarily it never gets updated either. By having VMs I can split server functions out to different VMs and upgrade them individually.
- for learning. I am learning a lot trying to get all these tricky things working together.
- because I just want to do it this way
As to why I am not using a modern version of esxi 5.1u1. The above posts were just for testing to get pci passthrough of the LSI 2308 working. I was trying to replicate gea's success by using the same software versions. I was also testing alternate versions to try and work out whether it was the specific version of esxi that made it work - or the guest os. Anyway that was just testing. I do intend to keep using the older esxi 5.0u2 because esxi 5.1 and esxi 5.1u1 have lost the ability to do pci passthrough of USB 'controllers' to VM guests and I need this functionality. I have tried doing standard USB pass though of my amplifiers usb sound device in esxi 5.1u1 to a guest and it tries to work but the sound output just fails after half a second. I would expect the same issue with my usb dvb-t card. From many reports I have read, pci passthrough of a usb controller to the guest is needed for these types of things.
If anyone is going to say the above is not the best way to do things - you are probably right. It is however the way I want to do this project and that is what I hope to accomplish.
Thank you for your interest.
Ant