Thanks, I'll do that.
I know, but even if my questions won't get answered, others's may be. I kept the title very broad for that reason.
Would it be usefull to open a "Feature request" so that we can keep track of any progress or test things out if it seems usefull?
I think that depends on your Hardware.
I choose the Intel SSD over the faster and cheaper Samsung 950 Pro for compatibility, safety reasons. I mean, Samsung doesn't even have a datasheet for the 950... Who knows what features might be missing to support passthrough, raid and what ever a "normal" consumer wont need.
And the ASUS-Mainboard, because it has support for the Intel SSD. (with the "Hyper-Kit")
I have an option in the bios to specify if i use the hyper-kit in the M.2 slot (and therefore an nvme SSD) or not.
It may otherwise run in some M.2/AHCI legacy mode, who knows.
As far as i know, the Mainboard/PCIe/BIOS can have impact on PCI-Passthrough, so your results may vary.
In my case, the answer is yes, I can.
Just for you, installed Win10 x64 on the mentioned Intel 750 NVMe SSD (M.2 -> Hyper-Kit -> U.2). (in under 5 Minutes I might add )
I used uefi/ovmf, rest is default. And of course edited the .xml to add the SSD passthrough, since only GPU/USB passthrough has support through the web interface.
No additional drivers were needed (but Intel recommends to install them at some point)
I had some trouble with the bootmanager and uefi, I need to select the windows-efi-bootfile manually.
But I have these on other VMs as well, problably related and not nvme specific.
Win7 has no native nvme support (afaik), so a hotfix/driver would probably be needed to install I asume.
Linux should work if the kernel has nvme support.
Mac I don't know.
I also can't say how safe it is to passthrough the ssd, if there are issues with the passthrough, the filesystem on you systemdrive could be damaged. Its your own risk I would say.
It may or may not be safer to format/mount the drive in unRAID and place your virtual disks there. At least you could place (and boot) any OS on there, even if there is no native nvme support (Win7)
If I find the time, I may run some benchmarks to compare passthrough vs. unRAID mounted.
So until the disk leaves the testbench and goes live, I could try things out if there are questions.
I would really appreciate an update on the status. As a first time UnRAIDer I am in the process of compiling my purchase list and would like to know if I can purchase the Intel 750 with the intention of solely running a VM on it through UnRAID. This drive will NOT need to be in an array or be used as a cache disk. If so, can I create this VM through UnRAID or would I have to do a passthrough? Thanks in advance for your help and I'm so excited to get started.