May 31, 201214 yr Hi Folks, this a question to the ESXi experts out there. I am running ESXI5.0 on a X8SIL-F with 16GB ECC and a L3426 One VM is my NAS with a LSI-9211-8i HBA passed through. Another VM is my DVB recorder, with a DBV-S card (4 Tuners in one PCIe x1, also in passthrough). Now my recordings are eating up my disk-space. I could either replace and grow with larger disks or add another HBA and insert more disks. Inserting HBA and disks is what I prefer ATM. Unfortunately, on the X8SIL-F, I have only one PCIe left, which is also coupled with the PCI and the IGP ("sitting behind" that PCIe. Therefore, upon passthrough of that slot, the IGP which is also used with IPMI access will be passed as well. Is this safe? Can it be done at all? What other option(s) do I have, given the constraint, that I do not want to swap motherboard and CPU. TIA, Ford
May 31, 201214 yr You could use a SAS expander. I use the Intel RES2SV240, $200. There are others, some have been tested.
May 31, 201214 yr Author Hmm, yes... basically an expander is not a bad idea. Alone pricing is such that these thingies are around USD400 here...and I have quite a batch of M1015 lying around, out of which I would employ 1 to this system. Next stage would be to restart all over, probably with a X9SCM-F + E3-1220V2. Other alternative is to keep the CPU and swap mobo to an X8SIA-F...that'll go at approx 250USD. I do not need the IGP...useless to watch the ESXi greeting screen....everything is done remotely. The question is: will it work as reliable as with the other ports, when passing on that particular PCIe (probably with the DVB-S card inside as this slot is only x4).
May 31, 201214 yr Other alternative is to keep the CPU and swap mobo to an X8SIA-F.. I can tell you from experience you will have trouble. The 2 of the 8x physical slots are behind a switch of some sort and will not pass through on ESXi. You can configure it and reboot and it keeps telling you need to reboot. I about pulled my hair out figuring that out. I ended up putting my pass-through controllers on the 16x physical and bottom 8x physical and using the "switched" ones for my datastore controller. I have not tried passing the 1x slots on my X8SIA-F yet, so i can not comment on that factor.
May 31, 201214 yr Author Other alternative is to keep the CPU and swap mobo to an X8SIA-F.. I can tell you from experience you will have trouble. The 2 of the 8x physical slots are behind a switch of some sort and will not pass through on ESXi. Thanks burr for sharing that information! Definitely saved my time and money...but I am balding in any case
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