I figured I'd post up my ESXi just in case anyone with similar hardware is thinking about it.

 

Hardware:

Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3

CPU - AMD FX-4100 (4 core x 3.6ghz)

RAM - 16gb 1600mhz non-ecc ram

Video card: AMD Radeon HD 5450

SATA Controller: Syba PEX40039 (ASMedia 1061)

USB Controller: Syba PEX 20140 (Etron EJ188)

 

I fiddled with ESXi 5.5 at first and got frustrated after having passthrough problems with my SATA controller. I downgraded to 5.1 update 2 and everything was fixed. If you're going to be doing any sort of passthrough just avoid 5.5 for now.

 

The cheapo Syba controller is for my SSD datastore. Then I have my onboard sata controller passed through to unraid.  There was one issue where after enabling passthrough on the onboard SATA controller the Syba one would disappear as well, leaving me with no datastore. I got around this by manually initializing the AHCI drivers after boot in the init.d

 

The video card and usb controller go to Windows 8.1 which is my media center now, with XBMC and Netflix. Then I have a debian VM for torrents and owncloud.

 

ESXi was a huge headache for me to set up, but definitely worth it now that it's done.

 

I fiddled with ESXi 5.5 at first and got frustrated after having passthrough problems with my SATA controller. I downgraded to 5.1 update 2 and everything was fixed. If you're going to be doing any sort of passthrough just avoid 5.5 for now.

 

Glad you got it all working.  Getting the correct mix of officially unsupported hardware to work with ESXi is tricky.

 

Interesting that you had better luck with 5.1U2 than with 5.5.  I built my machine in January, and at that time, it seemed the message was to stick with 5.0, and avoid 5.1 due to passthrough issues, especially with graphics cards.  I started with 5.0, and ran smoothly for a month, then upgraded to 5.5.  My 5.5 system has been running well.

 

It is true that 5.5 has reduced the number of drivers included with the release, so people have had good luck with starting with a base 5.0u3 installation and then upgrading to 5.5, as the upgrade / update process will keep all your old drivers.  The Realtek ethernet driver commonly used by consumer motherboards is one example of a driver no longer included with ESXi 5.5.  There are also procedures out there on the Internet to add this driver to a 5.5 installation kit.

 

I used this post at the Home Server Blog as my template.

 

http://thehomeserverblog.com/esxi/esxi-5-0-amd-whitebox-server-for-500-with-passthrough-iommu-build-2/

 

I ended up with some minor changes, noted in the forums over there:

 

http://forums.thehomeserverblog.com/esxi-compatible-hardware/asrock-970-extreme4/

 

Again, congratulations on getting it working!  Having ESXi running at home has been great.

 

John

The only thing stopping me from using 5.5 was the inability to passthrough the onboard SATA controller to unraid.  Overall 5.5 seems more stable and passes through the GPU without issue, for instance I had to do a pcihole fix in 5.1 which wasn't required in 5.5 to get more than 2gb of ram.

 

The only thing I couldnt' get going was DXVA in Windows, no matter what I did and with 2 different video cards it wouldn't work.  DXVA works perfectly in Xen though. I'm going back and forth between esxi and xen right now but I'm still on the fence, both have their strong and weak points. If I had a solid PCI-e sata controller and could get DXVA to work in windows, esxi 5.5 would be my choice for sure.

When you tried 5.5, were those initial installations at version 5.5, or upgrade from previous releases?  If you have good lock at 5.0 or 5.1, the upgrades will keep existing drivers.  You may wish to make a back up of your ESXi boot drive, and try 5.5. 

 

Now if you already tried that and things that -did- work in 5.0 or 5.1 stopped working, then yeah, I'd stick to what works.

 

John

It was a fresh install of 5.5 but I was able to get all of the drivers injected from earlier versions without issue.

 

The problem was that when I tried to passthrough my onboard SATA controller the VM wouldn't be able to see any of the drives connected to it - when looking for a solution it seems that this is a common problem with 5.5.

The problem was that when I tried to passthrough my onboard SATA controller the VM wouldn't be able to see any of the drives connected to it - when looking for a solution it seems that this is a common problem with 5.5.

 

Strange.  The world of passthrough seems to be very picky.  I've got 5.5 with December patches running fine for me with the unRAID drives connected to an LSI SAS3041E 4-Port SAS/SATA PCI-e x4 card.  After I backup my ESXi config (running off USB memory stick) I'll try the recently released 5.5U1, and hope things continue to work correctly.

 

Strange.  The world of passthrough seems to be very picky.  I've got 5.5 with December patches running fine for me with the unRAID drives connected to an LSI SAS3041E 4-Port SAS/SATA PCI-e x4 card.  After I backup my ESXi config (running off USB memory stick) I'll try the recently released 5.5U1, and hope things continue to work correctly.

 

I tried U1 as well, it seems to be an issue with passing through onboard SATA only, my pci sata card passed through fine but it didn't have enough ports for my entire unraid array.

I tried U1 as well, it seems to be an issue with passing through onboard SATA only, my pci sata card passed through fine but it didn't have enough ports for my entire unraid array.

 

ahh -- OK - that makes sense (in terms of why I haven't seen the issue, at least).  Supposedly, the motherboard SATA on my ASRock can be passed through, with the unusual (and mostly positive) side effect that one of the SATA ports stays "unpassed-through" while the others can only be seen by the passed through VM.

 

In my case, I elected not to pass through the Motherboard SATA, and have passed through my 4 port SATA PCI-e card.  As this is my first NAS of any type, it is meeting my needs.  I can certainly understand the desire to have more ports though.

 

John

 

 

The cheapo Syba controller is for my SSD datastore. Then I have my onboard sata controller passed through to unraid.  There was one issue where after enabling passthrough on the onboard SATA controller the Syba one would disappear as well, leaving me with no datastore. I got around this by manually initializing the AHCI drivers after boot in the init.d

 

 

hi, can you tell me how did you do this? I also got problem with both my pcie asmedia and onboard controller pantherpoint disappear when I pass through that onboard controller. Right now, I only passthrough both asmedia controller and need to rdm those hdd on pantherpoint (onboard sata).

 

I'm using esxi 5.0u3 btw..