ESXi PCI passthrough SmartArray P812 with 12TB MSA60

I have an HP Proliant DL 360 G6. ESXi is installed on the array controlled by the on board RAID controller (P420 I think)

ESXi recognizes the P812 RAID controller but when I put PCI passthrough on it I get a purple screen of death.

My goal is to virtualize an FTP/SAMBA server and give the P812 RAID controller (all 12TB of the MSA60) solely to the FTP/SAMBA VM and nothing else.

I have tried ESXi 5.1 (known to have broken PCI passthrough) and 5.0 (shouldn't have broken passthrough). How do I get this working?

Solution 1:

PCI passthrough is supported on the devices you have. You'll need to update the firmware of all devices. Do this with all devices connected and by running the HP Service Pack for ProLiant bootable DVD. Your PSOD error may have been resolved in a later build of ESXi. Don't just use what you've downloaded from VMware. You'll want to update to the latest build from the patch download site.

I think using the Smart Array P812 controller is a mistake in a passthrough configuration, though. By dedicating it to a single virtual machine, you've added complexity to the setup with no performance or manageability advantage. In addition, you'll need to monitor the storage hardware from the file server VM as well as at the ESXi level.

A better solution would be to use one or both controllers (since the P812 can address your internal disks, too) and create multiple HP logical drives, placing the file server's data in standard VMDK files. With that, you'll have a single management plane.

But ensure all updates are in place before trying the passthrough again.

Solution 2:

Why would want to implement the complexity of passing it through. Just configure a datastore and present a VMDK or RDM only to your FTP/SAMBA server. This gives you may more flexibility and will be far more supportable.

That said, by doing this anyway, you're losing a lot of the benefits of virtualisation unless you're going to implement some kind of replication system.