2 x HD PVR in vSphere Hypervisor / ESXi 5

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by wkearney99

You've got an SAT2-MV8 working in pass-thru on an ESXi 5 server?

I've tried and it hangs the vmware host hard. That is, I set it up as pass-thru on ESXi, rebooted and then added it as a pass-through PCI device in a windows 8 guest. If boot the VM guest without any drives attached it seems to work. But if there are any drives attached the whole machine locks solid. Even the ESXi host.

This on a supermicro X7DWE motherboard with a pair of E5440 Xeons, 16gb of RAM, VT-d enabled and running the 1.2c BIOS.

I've set up other VM guests with other cards and those work fine. Specifically an IBM M1015 and an Areca 1260. Although the 1260 in JBOD mode seems a bit finicky about keeping drives alive, but seems to work otherwise.

Sorry I missed this. I had it working on pass through just fine to an unRAID VM (linux based). I had problems when using Windows VMs virtualized on my X7SBE and it didn't seem to matter what controller was installed but it didn't lockup any other VMs or the host and the problems wouldn't show up right away. About every 2 weeks or so the Windows VM would be locked up and I would have to kill it and restart. I've since switched to a Tyan S5512GM2NR MB and 16GB of memory with the same VMs.

[sflamm]

I have a Asus P5M-M motherboard with a Xeon 3220.
The Xeon supports VT-x : http://ark.intel.com/products/28034/...z-1066-MHz-FSB

I am hoping to virtualize the current Windows 2003 R2 image running my SageTV server (with HDPVRs attached via firewire (tuning) & USB - both provided via a PCI card).

My storage is provided by Adaptec 3405 Raid cards.

I would ultimately like to run two VMs, one Windows 2012 server and the Windows 2003 R2 containing my existing SageTV server.

I have little to no experience with ESXi...

Will this approach work? What are the steps to go about it?

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by sflamm

I have a Asus P5M-M motherboard with a Xeon 3220.
The Xeon supports VT-x : http://ark.intel.com/products/28034/...z-1066-MHz-FSB

I am hoping to virtualize the current Windows 2003 R2 image running my SageTV server (with HDPVRs attached via firewire (tuning) & USB - both provided via a PCI card).

My storage is provided by Adaptec 3405 Raid cards.

I would ultimately like to run two VMs, one Windows 2012 server and the Windows 2003 R2 containing my existing SageTV server.

I have little to no experience with ESXi...

Will this approach work? What are the steps to go about it?

First step I would do is to setup ESXi on a USB stick and make sure you can setup pass through on your cards. Your processor may support pass through but not all motherboards do. My X7SBE had everything in the bios to support pass through but it didn't work correctly until bios version 2.0. Everything I learned about ESXi I got from reading this thread on unRAID forums and further research if something didn't make sense on the VMWare site/forums.

[sflamm]

Thanks for the suggestion.

If I install ESXi to a USB stick can it boot without a disk storage (other than the USB)? (sorry newbie)

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by sflamm

Thanks for the suggestion.

If I install ESXi to a USB stick can it boot without a disk storage (other than the USB)? (sorry newbie)

It would boot but you wouldn't be able to do anything without a disk for a datastore. You definitely need to have NO disks connected when you setup ESXi on the USB stick or it will "helpfully" format any it finds to be datastores.

[sflamm]

Thanks for the heads-up.

With that kind of help who needs enemies?