pci passthrough

[sisrep]

Good morning,

We have a problem on an ESXI that has a tape drive connected via a Smart HBA H241.
The ESXI is installed on an HPe ProLiant ML350 Gen10 server with an active license.
We want our VM to be able to access this tape drive and to do this, we have enabled passthrough for this raid card.
But when we add this card to our VM (by deactivating "Expose hardware virtualization assistance to the guest OS" because otherwise it is impossible to put this PCI card and by activating "Reserve all guest memory (fully locked)" otherwise impossible to boot the VM) we have the machine which starts, then after a few seconds, the VM freezes and crashes.
We initially thought that the problem came from our Windows installation (the crash occurs while Windows is loading).
We therefore tested with a blank VM to which we connected the HBA and set up an ISO to install a new Windows and again, the VM crashes the first time Windows is loaded (well before installing it)
Do you have a solution?

[Alfista_PS]

Hi,

 

do you have tried to install the Win without the card added to the VM if the problem is in the card or in the VM settings for the Win you will try to install?

You need to know that by installing the newest Win version on older HW can happen issues like this.

What Win version you try to install and from year is your host HW?

 

[sisrep]

Without the HBA the Windows installation goes without problem. I am installing a Windows Server 2023 on an ML560 G10 purchased new this year.

[Alfista_PS]

And what for HBA is it? How old is it?

 

[sisrep]

It's a Smart HBA H241 plug into PCI-E Slot 4

[bluefirestorm]

Which slot is the HBA installed on?
From the ML350 Gen 10 quickspecs, slots 2 and 4 are only x4 electrical width (even though physical it is x8). See page 9 of https://www.hpe.com/psnow/doc/a00021852enw.pdf While the H241 is a x8 PCIe card; see page 2 of https://www.hpe.com/psnow/doc/c04346305

Try using either slots 1 or 3 if the system has only one CPU. If the system has a 2nd CPU, try slots 5 through 8.

Make sure there is no PCIe lane sharing between slots. You need to dig in to the manual of ML350 Gen 10 server to confirm if there is any PCIe lane sharing between slots based on the CPU the system has.

Also in case the system has dual CPUs, try setting VM CPU affinity to the correct CPU (slots 1 or 3 set vCPU affinity to Processor 1, slots 5-8 set vCPU affinity to Processor 2) as there is no PCIe electrical pathway for slots 1-4 to Processor 2 and slots 5-8 has no electrical pathway to Processor 1.

 

[sisrep]

I'll check which port I connected the HBA to and I'll get back to you.

[Alfista_PS]

I have looked at the HBA and its from 2015. Are the drivers for your Win Server 2023 or its for older Windows?

I thing there will be problem in the Win Server 2023 with supporting your HBA, that the drivers aren't build for your version?

As I have looked in the OS support on HP site there is max support for the Win Server 2012R2 but not for the 2023.

So it looks that it will not work in your Win Server 2023. This isn't problem with ESXi its self but with the VM OS.