Ivan

Wanted to sanity check my theory that one could successfully passthrough a TPM module to a virtual machine inside the UnRAID environment before I went ahead and bought one. I am brand new to UnRAID (about to buy a license in a couple days once I set up my VM and my extra drives come in), so please forgive me if this is a dumb question. Use case: Use TPM enabled Bitlocker for a Windows 10 UnRAID virtual machine. Assumptions: 1) Virtual machines in UnRAID use KVM. Source: http://lime-technology.com/unraid-6-virtualization-update/ 2) TPM passthrough is possible in KVM. Source: https://devopsjedi.com/index.php/2015/09/02/trusted-platform-module-pass-through-for-windows-guest-on-kvm/ I would really appreciate confirmation that my logic is sound and that TPM passthrough is possible. Also, if anyone could provide some guidance as to how to do it (tested or untested) I would be eternally grateful. I will happily post back results when/if I get it working.

Short answer: Yes you can run a VM on that drive outside of the array. At least I can (and I currently do) and I see no reason why other systems should behave different. You could also use passthrough for better perfomance, but passthrough always depends on more components. In my case it worked fine, same procedure as a GPU. Longer answer: You wont be able to do everything through the Web-Interface, so a basic understanding about ssh/cli commands and/or linux in general will help. You would need to identify the name of your device, be able to format it as xfs (or ext4) and mount it somewhere under /mnt. Once you do that, you can choose the drive like any other disk on your server when creating VMs through the GUI. It would defenitly help to know how you automate the mounting procedure for every reboot of your server. If you are able to do all of that, your are done in 5-20 minutes and can start your VM. But since you are a "first timer", I would asume, that these steps are not exactly familiar to you? I could post the way I did it, that does not mean its safe or the best/easyest way, but it worked for me. (and others I spoke to) I definetly had a very good learning experience, I still dont know everything I should know about what i have done, but I know more than before You would still do it at your own risk, so create backups of whatever is on your ssd or dont put any valuable date on it. I dont think "official" NVMe support is something we will see in the next 4-6 Month, maybe some beta features or plugins, but from what I have seen so far, there are a lot of things that needs to be evaluated before it can be supported. But that is just my personal opinion, i have no knowledge how fast lime-tech can get where ever it is they want to be, before they support new stuff. I'm reasonably familiar with Terminal use from my server days, but a walkthrough of your process would be an invaluable reference. Thanks in advance for your help!

I'll try this soon. Was just wondering if there was an update about NVMe support for this plugin. Keep up the great work and thank you for your contribution!

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.